The Hermitage Palace

Why it is renowned

The lodge stands in the par force hunting landscape of North Zealand, which UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2015.¹² That landscape of hunting lanes laid out in stars and an orthogonal grid, numbered stone posts, fences and a hunting lodge shows Baroque planning applied to forests, and the Jægersborg park within it was laid out around this royal lodge.³¹ Its name comes from the hermitage table, a lift that raised the laid table from the kitchen so the king and his guests could dine without servants in the room; Christian V's earlier lodge on the site had a similar lift.⁴⁵ The Royal Danish Collection names it among the six royal palaces and castles it shows to the public.⁶

The story

Christian V had a first lodge, the Hubertus house, built on the site by Hans van Steenwinckel III around 1694.⁵ It had decayed by 1734, and Lauritz de Thurah built the present lodge for Christian VI from 1734 to 1736 at a cost of about 18,000 rigsdaler.⁵ It was never meant as a residence but as a setting for banquets during the royal hunts, and the monograms of Christian VI and Queen Sophie Magdalene sit in the gilded ceiling of its Dining Hall.⁵² The table mechanism was taken out about twenty years after it was installed.⁴ Condemned in 1790, the lodge was saved by Count Rantzau, who held it from 1794 until it returned to the crown by 1797.⁵ On 5 June 1849 Frederik VII signed the Danish constitution here, ending absolute monarchy.⁵ Ferdinand Meldahl restored the exterior decoration in the 1890s, and a restoration completed in 2013 brought back the Dining Hall.⁵⁴ It is open on guided tours and special events, and to visitors at their own pace in August.²

What to know it by

• The Dining Hall⁴1736Lauritz de ThurahBaroque hall with the gilded C6 and SM monograms in the ceiling
• The hermitage table⁴Lift that raised the laid table from the kitchen below; since gone