Amalienborg Palace: Where the Danish Royals Actually Live

Amalienborg is four identical Rococo palaces arranged symmetrically around an octagonal courtyard in the centre of Copenhagen, facing the harbour. They were built between 1750 and 1760 as townhouses for Danish nobility and have been the primary residence of the Danish royal family since 1794, when a fire at Christiansborg Palace forced the move. One of the four palaces is currently occupied by Queen Margrethe II (as of 2024, having abdicated in favour of King Frederik X in January 2024). This is a working royal residence, not a museum, which shapes the visitor experience.

The equestrian statue of Frederik V in the centre of the octagonal square was commissioned from the French sculptor Jacques Saly in 1752 and took 24 years to complete; it was the most expensive public artwork in 18th-century Copenhagen and Saly’s salary for the 20 years he spent making it exceeded the cost of the bronze. It remains one of the better equestrian portraits in northern Europe.

Visiting

Changing of the Guard: Happens daily at noon when the royal family is in residence. The Royal Life Guards march from Rosenborg Castle at 11:30 and arrive at Amalienborg for the ceremony at noon. Free to watch from the octagonal square. The route from Rosenborg is worth standing along if you want photographs of the guards in procession.

Amalienborg Museum: Occupies Christian VIII’s Palace and covers the history of the Danish monarchy from 1863 through to the present day, using original furnishings, portraits, and personal artefacts. The museum is particularly good on the personal lives of the modern monarchs; the recreation of Frederik IX’s study is more interesting than most royal residence museums manage. Admission around 125 DKK.

Marble Church (Frederikkirken): The domed neoclassical church directly across Amaliegade from the palace was designed as a visual centrepiece for the Amalienborg complex in 1749 but ran out of funding and stood as a ruin for over a century before being completed in 1894. The dome (31 metres diameter) is the largest in Scandinavia. Free to enter.

Copenhagen Context

Amalienborg sits between Nyhavn (10 minutes’ walk west) and the waterfront where the harbour buses run. The neighbourhood around the palace, Frederiksstaden, is one of the more architecturally coherent 18th-century districts in northern Europe: wide streets, Rococo and neoclassical facades, the planned geometry of the Enlightenment applied to urban design.

The Design Museum Denmark is 5 minutes’ walk from the palace. The Opera House across the harbour (Norman Foster, 2005, connected to Amalienborg by a direct visual axis that was deliberately planned) is accessible by harbour bus.

For coffee: the neighbourhood streets around the palace have good independent cafes. The Kongens Have (King’s Garden) around Rosenborg Castle, 15 minutes’ walk, has good public green space in the centre of the city.