Museums - National Museum of Denmark

The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) is the country's largest museum of cultural history. Established in 1892 and situated in the center of Copenhagen, the museum is housed in the Prince's Palace, a classical eighteenth-century mansion built by Nicolai Eigtved between 1743 and 1744 which once served as a residence for members of the Danish royal family. Preserved in the Palace are vast collections of items illuminating Danish cultural history from prehistoric epochs to modern times, featuring such world-famous archaeological artifacts as the Gundestrupp Cauldron and the Chariot of the Sun, as well as the nation's royal numismatic collections, a significant collection of ethnographic art, and the most important collection of Classical and Near Eastern antiquities in the country.
The museum's ethnographic collection originated with "The Indian Chamber," an element of Denmark's Royal Cabinet of Curiosities in the mid-seventeenth century, which included items from China, East India, and elsewhere. The collection was rapidly enlarged throughout the nineteenth century by donations and contributions resulting from expeditions and Danish colonial possessions around the world. Today it contains works from Greenland, the pre-Columbian Americas, Africa, India, Indonesia, and East Asia.