Experimentarium

Why it is renowned

In 2018 TIME magazine put Experimentarium on its first list of the World's 100 Greatest Places, one of three Copenhagen names on it with Tivoli and Noma.¹ Condé Nast Traveler names it among the ten best museums in Copenhagen, a science and technology centre of exhibitions, demonstrations and chemistry and physics shows in an old Tuborg bottling plant.² Almost everything in it is made to be touched and worked by hand, and its exhibitions cover light, water, the human body, the senses and global trade.³⁴

The story

Experimentarium opened in 1991 and is run as a non-profit foundation whose purpose is to raise interest in science and technology, with children and teenagers first in mind.³ It sits on the Tuborg Havn peninsula in Hellerup, the old site of the Tuborg brewery, which stopped brewing there in 1996.⁵⁴ The new Experimentarium opened in January 2017, with architecture by CEBRA that joins new parts to the brewery's old bottling hall, and exhibitions designed by its own staff with few exceptions.¹ Visitors enter by a copper-clad helix staircase and move through three indoor floors and a rooftop that opens from spring to autumn.⁶⁴ In the Labyrinth of Light a laser harp plays a tune, and in the Tunnel of Senses visitors walk through a lifetime of the senses, from the womb to old age.⁴

What to know it by

• The Helix staircase⁶2017CEBRACopper-clad spiral stair in the entrance hall
• The Labyrinth of Light⁴Exhibition on light with a laser harp
• The Tunnel of Senses⁴A walk through the senses over a lifetime
• The Miniverse⁴Science exhibition for children aged one to five