If you sit on a stone step in the sun and close your eyes, inhale the wonderful smell from the bakery and listen to the sounds of horses and hens, in your thoughts you will be transported back to another time. A faraway time it seems – but still a time many of us remember, at least partly.
And when you open your eyes again and see the sun shine on the cobblestone-covered streets and the beautiful, old timber frame houses – well, it isn’t a dream after all. Den Gamle By – “The Old Town” - in Jutland is fortunately very real. You can easily spend a whole day here, because the houses are filled with interiors, workshops and exhibitions of all kinds.
The museum was established in 1909 as the world's first open-air museum of urban history and culture. In the beginning the buildings were the demolition-threatened houses from the area, but later different kinds of buildings from other parts of Denmark were added.
The very first building in the museum was the Mayor’s House, where domestic culture from 1600 to 1850 is on show. Adjacent to the house is a fine Renaissance garden from 1647. Gardens of this type were purely for show, and the fine pattern formed by low, close-cropped boxwood could best be seen from the first floor. In contrast to this decorative garden lies a romantic garden with roses and ivy, and gardens of this type became fashionable in the eighteenth century.
The Merchant's House and shop from 1864 is typical from the time. In the shop you could buy a mix of foodstuff and utensils, and the merchant was usually an enterprising man, who also imported and sold goods abroad. In the room beside the shop tired travellers could relax with a snifter or two.
The Pharmacy in The Old Town is the oldest and best preserved in Denmark, and it appears as a well-stocked pharmacy would have looked like in the first half of the 1700s. In the back garden you can see the many healing herbs, which were cultivated by the pharmacist for the manufacture of his own drugs, but at the same time the many voyages of discovery gave him the opportunity to offer more exotic new medicaments from faraway places.
The Mint master’s Mansion lies on the town square like the Mayor’s House. In 1683 it was built as a residence for the royal mint master, and at that time it was one of the finest houses in Copenhagen. But soon after timber framed buildings went out of fashion, and although it was modernized in the 1700s it became so worn down, that it was demolished in the 1900s. Sensibly enough all the parts were stowed away, and in 1995 they were brought to The Old Town. Ten years later the house was rebuild as the stately home it once was.
The well-preserved staircase from the beginning of the 1700s leads up to a beautiful rococo apartment with handmade wallpaper and a hand-painted ceiling with birds. The ceiling goes back to the 1600s, and although it was heavily degraded by fungi and insects, when it was found at a storeroom in Copenhagen, it was recreated in minute detail.
The toy museum is situated in a beautiful, old warehouse, where you can see 5000 different toys from the 1600’s onwards to the 1950’s. The exhibition will undoubtedly awake the joy of recognition among those of us remembering things like Märklin trains, mechanical toys, dolls and teddy bears.
Today there are 75 very different houses in the museum, including a beautiful theatre, a post office and a telephone exchange. Most buildings are from the 1700’s and the 1800’s, but more recent times are emerging. The 20th century has its own quarter, where you can see the houses and shops from the “happy seventies”, and even our own time (2014) is now represented.
The Old Town is a wonderful place to explore history in an informative and entertaining way. It's so good to know one’s roots - and in a time when development occurs with rocket speed, you really need to go a few steps back and feel the atmosphere of those days where everything was done in a very different pace.
