Frederiksstad with Amalienborg

by Senior Researcher at the National Museum, Ulla Kjær
The urban quarter, Frederiksstaden, in Copenhagen is an emblematic microcosm of society. It symbolizes the ideal of the autocratic rule in the dual monarchy of Denmark-Norway around 1750: a society led by a devout king with a sense for art and science, with laws that promoted the citizens’ enterprise and made provisions for the needy and the ill.

The laying out of the foundations of this new urban quarter was coupled in 1749 with the celebration of the Oldenburg Dynasty’s 300th anniversary as the nation’s ruling family. It was a group of powerful merchants that took the initiative to have the district laid out, but the thoughts about synchronizing the founding of the new quarter with the Royal Jubilee celebration, about naming the urban section after King Frederik V and about developing the district as an ideal society originated primarily with the monarch’s personal advisor, Lord Chamberlain Adam Gottlob Moltke.

A model urban quarter in the making
The ground area where the district was to be built was situated all the way out to the harbor in what was then the northern part of Copenhagen. Here, King Frederick III’s queen had her baroque country castle, “Sophie Amalienborg.” However, this castle was destroyed in 1689 when a conflagration broke out inside a temporary theatre stationed on the site. The hall had been filled with burgher families when the castle burned. After this catastrophe, it was difficult to get anybody interested in building anything new right there.

But suddenly, the land was parceled out, according to a planned system, and the king donated individual parcels to burghers who, as was clearly stipulated in the printed by-law dated September 15, 1749, “would build on the site.” A church was promised to the new model urban quarter and there was also going to be room made for Denmark’s first public treatment hospital, Frederik’s Hospital (on the site which is presently occupied by The Danish Museum of Art & Design), where there would be access to everybody except children under the age of seven and the incurably ill.

An emblem of the king’s rule
The Royal Building Master, Niels Eigtved, was entrusted with the responsibility of laying out Frederiksstaden. Eigtved mastered the modern French rococo style and was regarded as one of the kingdom’s finest architects: he was fully capable of creating an urban quarter that would express what the King – and Lord Chamberlain Moltke – wanted, namely an emblematic picture of the autocratic king’s rule. It would express the king’s might, wealth and politics – but would also articulate that the king was indeed aspiring to bring forth a modern society with free and independently active inhabitants.

The new urban layout was supplied with two main axes: Amaliegade, running along its lengthwise extension and the shorter Frederiksgade, running perpendicular to Amaliegade. All the burgher’s houses would be built according to the same façade scheme, which was designed by Eigtved. On Amaliegade, buildings of the same type are therefore placed side by side in the manner of lengthy uniform street walls. On the other hand, there are no burgher’s houses at all on Frederiksgade (between the water and Bredgade) and with the very distinctive elaboration of its buildings’ heights and façades, this intersecting cross street posed a striking contrast to Amaliegade. 



The king’s world emanated from here
At the junction where the two streets cross each other, Eigtved designed an octagonal open plaza space, which was later to become Amalienborg Slotsplads [Castle Square]. This open plaza was encircled by four nobleman’s palaces. Along the transverse axis, on two of The hogs where Frederiksgade meets Bredgade, two more mansions were built. Opposite these palatial mansions, just beyond Frederiksgade’s “mouth,” there was a garden area that, strictly speaking, was situated outside the limits of the Frederiksstad quarter but actually belonged to the king’s paternal aunt. It was on this very ground area that Eigtved planned out what was slated to be the district’s new church, Frederik’s Church.

With its meticulously designed plan, the entire neighborhood became an emblematic picture of the king’s universe. At the castle square lived the noblemen who were holding influential government posts. Radiating concentrically from here, the more ordinary burghers were stationed in somewhat less extraordinary homes. And in the center of the plaza, the king was interposed, with his head held high, mounted proudly on a horse, in the form of a magnificent equestrian statue created by the French-born sculptor, Jacques-François-Joseph Saly. Consequently, all the people looking out from Bredgade’s noble facades would be able see how the king, surrounded by all his people, rode in from the harbor, Denmark’s gateway to the world, directly toward the church, toward his Lord and protector, God himself.

An implicit hierarchy
The symbolic system was underscored in the architecture. Eigtved operated with three groups and three cornice heights. The cornices of the burgher’s house were lowest in elevation; the noblemen’s mansions were one level higher. The uppermost elevation was represented by the church, which in Eigtved’s rendition was supposed to be a circular-shaped building with an enormously high dome and two almost equally tall side towers flanking a façade that resembled those façades found in front of the four Amalienborg palaces.

With this spatial orchestration, what emerged was a fantastic interplay between the solid foundation of harmonious burgher’s houses, the nobility’s discreet splendor and the towering church.

The Marble Church’s beginnings
Ground was broken and work on building the church that Eigtved had designed was commenced. However, at the time of Eigtved’s death in 1754, construction had not even progressed beyond the level of the foundation and the continuation of construction on the church building was put in the hands of the architect, Nicolas-Henri Jardin. At this time, it was determined that the building would have solid walls of stone transported to Copenhagen from a newly discovered quarry in Norway. This served to render the building unconscionably expensive and this problem swelled into being the main reason that the project was discontinued in 1770. The church that stands today and which has come to be known as “The Marble Church,” dates from 1894; it was designed by the architect, Ferdinand Meldahl, in a neo-baroque style.

The king’s home burns – and he gets a new one
The four palaces around Amalienborg Plads [Castle Square] met with an unexpected fate. In 1794, the Danish king’s fifty year old residence castle, Christiansborg Palace, burned to the ground. As a direct consequence of this situation, King Christian VI and the crown prince (who later ascended to the throne as King Frederik VI) moved into two of the four Amalienborg palaces.

The architect, Caspar Frederik Harsdorff, linked these two palaces together with a colonnade of wood straddling over the width of Amaliegade. Although this was merely intended to be a short-term solution, it remained standing. Similarly, the temporary accommodations of the royal king and prince eventually came to be a permanent set-up.

Christiansborg Palace was reconstructed, burned down again and was raised once again. But in the meantime, the two other Amalienborg palaces wound up in possession of the royal family. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was finally resolved that Christiansborg Palace would accommodate only royal reception rooms while Amalienborg would be the royal family’s home.

With the four palaces, several generations of royalty could live in their own residences at one and the same time. The original Moltke’s Palace, which contains the most well-preserved eighteenth century interiors of the four mansions, is now used exclusively for representation and state visits. The original Schack’s Palace is currently the Royal Palace: the Copenhagen home of Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II and the queen’s husband, The Price Consort, Henrik (né Henri Marie Jean André de Laborde de Monpezat). Levetzau’s Palace houses the Amalienborg Museum, the Queen’s Reference Library and an apartment for His Royal Highness Frederik André Henrik Christian, Crown Prince of Denmark, and his bride, Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, Crown Princess of Denmark. As a consequence of the natural reshuffling of quarters, the original Brockdorff’s Palace, where the preceding regent couple (i.e. Queen Margrethe’s parents, King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid) resided, is presently being remodeled, so as to become the next generation’s royal palace.

Candidate for World Heritage
Frederiksstaden is now being proposed as a candidate for inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. The motivating argument here is that this district is one of the most solidly cast urban layouts in Denmark and that it is unique by virtue of its grandiose and logical planning.

The layout as a whole and the plaza around which Amalienborg spreads, in particular, elegantly rises to a whole other aesthetic level, and in a most dignified fashion, as one of Europe’s most beautiful and consistently implemented eighteenth-century layouts.