The open-air museum, Frilandsmuseet in Copenhagen, is one of the largest of its kind in the world.
The museum, which covers 86 hectares of land, is home to more than 50 farms, mills and houses dating from 1650 to 1940 and gives you the opportunity to experience old Denmark as it used to be.
The museum is located in Kongens Lyngby, 40 minutes outside Copenhagen, and is a fully interactive experience. Meet the volunteers who run the old wooden windmill, gather by the village pool where women bake bread and sort wool, or learn all about the estate's bees from the beekeepers' guild. There are many ways to get involved and bring the past to life.
The museum also offers seasonal events and theater performances and has an exciting murder mystery from 1865 for visitors to solve.
Country life as it used to be
The buildings have been reconstructed along with the gardens and surrounding landscape to give visitors an impression of the history and environment of country life as it was then. Historic houses, an open-air theater, cattle breeding and a petting zoo, old-fashioned food and the sale of food at the cooperative market in the railroad town - all this can be explored. The buildings have been restored exactly as they looked when farmers, craftsmen and the gentry of the estate occupied the buildings.
Frilandsmuseet © Nationalmuseet Photo: Nationalmuseet
The Open-Air Museum covers practically all the regions of Denmark and the Faroe Islands, as well as the former Danish provinces in southern Sweden and northern Germany, so you can travel all over Denmark in a single afternoon - just a one-way train ride from the center of Copenhagen.
The museum also has 25 historic gardens with flowers, fruit trees and useful plants that show the various practices over the course of time, as well as three beautiful old windmills and several water mills.
