Den Gamle By

Why it is renowned

In 2026 the European Museum Forum named Den Gamle By European Museum of the Year, its prize for museums that find new ways to engage their visitors.¹ It was the first open-air museum anywhere to take town life rather than village life as its subject, and it inspired similar museums in Bergen in Norway and Turku in Finland.² More than 400,000 people visit it each year.²

The story

When the Renaissance mayor's house in Aarhus was to be pulled down in 1908, the teacher Peter Holm had it taken apart instead; it stood at the National Exhibition in Aarhus in 1909 and opened as a museum, The Old Mayor's House, in 1914.² In 1923 Holm raised the money to move a merchant's estate of eight buildings from Aalborg, and the museum became a town.² He ran it until 1945 and saved some fifty buildings from demolition.² Today 75 houses from 20 towns, most of them half-timbered and built between the mid-18th and early 19th century, stand along its streets, with shops, workshops and staff in period dress.² The Coin Master's Mansion from Copenhagen, built around 1683, was rebuilt here between 1998 and 2009.²

What to know it by

• The Mayor's House1597The museum's first building, from Aarhus
• The Coin Master's Mansion1683Gregorius SessemannHome of the royal coin masters in Copenhagen
• The Aalborg Estate1570A merchant's estate of five buildings
• The Danish Clock MuseumFrom sundials to mechanical clocks
• The Toy MuseumSome 6,000 toys from the 19th century to the 1960s