Harsdorff's House - 3 Kongens Nytorv, 1050, Denmark

Operated by Karberghus

About this space

Model house with success & A Giant in Danish Architecture The director of the Royal Danish Academy, CF Harsdorff, built two houses in one on Kongens Nye Torv with royal favor. With the latest classicist architecture inspired by Antiquity, it formed with the grand Tempel gable in ensemble with the other beauties of the square a facility worthy of a king. The house was built as a 'Model for the Public in Borgerhuuses Aleg og Indretning'. And the hope of inspiring improvements in a Copenhagen where the housing was small and unsuitable was fulfilled when, after the city's second major fire in 1795, whole new quarters were built according to Harsdorff's model. One-to-one history lessons; Harsdorffs is the living monument to that course in Danish architectural history, which most strongly came to design the houses and streets that, with symmetrical harmony and simplicity, still shape the inner city. A richly decorated and beloved home for counts and barons, the captains of the flourishing period, domestic political pitchers and enterprising entrepreneurs, before it was owned by the State for a period of more than a hundred years and formed the framework for first the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then the Conciliation Institution and School of Architecture.