Visitor information

Open Air Museum

Visit the shop
At the main entrance there is a wide range of goods at the museum shop. The museum also has a kiosk and a restaurant with a charming garden.



The Open Air Museum has free admission and is a must for every tourist! Spend a day in surroundings of scenic beauty and take in a little of the cultural history of everyday life as it used to be at the time of Hans Christian Andersen - most of the houses appears as in the 19th century, when the famous Danish writer wrote his fairytales The Open Air Museum north of Copenhagen is one of the largest and oldest in the world. Spread across 86 acres of land today the museum houses more than 50 farms, mills and houses from the period 1650-1950. Virtually every region in Denmark and the Faeroe Islands as well as the former Danish provinces of southern Sweden and northern Germany is represented so at the Open Air Museum you can travel the length and breadth of Denmark in a single afternoon - just a stone's throw from Copenhagen centre. Visit the smallholder´s cottage Visitors are invited inside a smallholder's cottage, a water mill and a country manor. All the buildings are fully furnished and equipped - and surrounded by the museum's ducks and sheep. The museum is recreating scenes from daily life by reviving old work processes and handicraft and by readings. Meet the kitchen maid, fishwife or shopkeeper and enjoy the pantomimes in the summertime. Garden and heath The Open Air Museum was founded in 1897 and moved to Sorgenfri north of Kongens Lyngby in 1901. All buildings were transferred from their original sites to the museum. The adjacent land of each building has been made into gardens or reshaped in order to show the distinct character of the original surrounding in the various parts of the country with running streams, open landscapes or stretches of barren heath. The Cradle of Industry The Open Air Museum not only tells the story about the rural population of earlier times. At the scenic stream of Mølleåen to the north of the Open Air Museum you will find Brede Works. The intact industrial plant gives a complete impression of a factory community with workmen's and foremen's houses, eating house (today made into a restaurant), orphanage, nursery garden etc. The old factory buildings house the exhibitions 'The Cradle of Industry' and 'Dressed in Time'. On special days the factory owner's beautiful neoclassical mansion from 1795 is open for visitors. In 1999 the house was awarded for the Europa Nostra prize for a fine job of restoration.