It’s a historic week for Denmark’s royal family. On Sunday, January 14, Queen Margrethe II will hand over the reins to her son Crown Prince Frederik who will become the new King of Denmark.
Queen Margrethe II’s abdication will be the first time a Danish monarch has stepped down voluntarily in almost 900 years. In 1523, Christian II was forcefully abdicated after ten years on the Danish throne but before that, no Danish monarch had voluntarily relinquished the throne since King Erik III Lam in 1146.
The Danish queen has been on the throne since 1972, but she has managed to pursue other interests during that time. Together with her husband, French diplomat Count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, she translated works by the feminist Simone de Beauvoir into Danish. She worked as a painter and graphic artist, designed several stamps for the Danish postal service and, in 1977, provided illustrations for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer. In 2009, she designed costumes for the film The Wild Swans based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
Even though Prince Frederik X will be officially Denmark’s king, Margrethe II. will retain the right to be called “majesty” and both the new and the old royals will likely continue to reside in Amalienborg Palace. They’ll also spend a lot of time at the royal family’s other impressive estates. Here, find the six most important palaces of the Danish crown.
The Danish royal family’s castles
Planning for Amalienborg Palace began in 1749. In its centre, four medium-sized palaces stand opposite each other on an octagonal square, because the then Danish King Frederik V wanted to create a baroque district in medieval Copenhagen is based on the French model. Initially, it began as an investor project. Interested members of the nobility were to purchase the almost identical palaces, which were built according to a general plan by the court architect Nicolai Eigtved; in return, 40 years of tax remission beckoned. The Danish royal family only gradually came into possession of the residences. Margrethe’s residence is Palais Schack, named after its first owner, Countess Schack (an ancestor of the orientalist and founder of the Schack Collection in Munich, Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack). Palais Levetzau houses a museum dedicated to the royal family. Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary lived in the apartment above for a long time, but it has since passed to his brother Joachim and his wife Marie of Denmark. Palais Moltke can also be visited on guided tours. The new King Frederik X lives with his family in Palais Brockdorff, the east wing of the palace. Incidentally, before Amalienborg Palace was built, there was a pleasure palace there.