Church of Our Saviour — church building
Avda · CC BY-SA 3.0

Church of Our Saviour

Vor Frelsers Kirke

  • 2 min read
  • 55.673° N 12.594° E

Interesting facts

  • A persistent myth says the architect leapt from the spire on realising the spiral turned the wrong way; in fact Thurah died of illness seven years later.
  • Thurah took his idea from Borromini's corkscrew lantern on Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza in Rome, and his staircase spirals in the same direction as that Roman model.
  • Thurah first planned a heavy sandstone spiral, then switched to a copper-clad timber frame, which let the corkscrew rise far higher without removing a storey of the tower.
  • King Frederick V climbed the newly finished spire himself at a ceremony on 28 August 1752.
  • The four-metre gilded Christ on top has deliberately exaggerated proportions, meant to be seen only from afar, which earned it a reputation as Copenhagen's ugliest statue.
  • The outer staircase circles the spire four times, its radius shrinking with every turn as it climbs towards the globe.
  • The church was raised on swampy ground: preparing the site took over a year, and in the 1950s concrete had to be laid in the loft to secure the vaults.
  • Its carved organ case, dated 1698, is the oldest surviving organ front in the Danish capital.
  • One of the tower's old bells, the Gyldenløve bell, was taken as war booty during the Scanian War of the 1670s.
  • Work on Tessin's marble altarpiece stalled for over a decade during the Great Northern War, and in 1728 sailors from the naval base helped hoist its heavy parts into place.

Why it is worth it

A black and gold spire, twisting upwards with a staircase wound around its outside, makes the Church of Our Saviour one of the most recognisable silhouettes in Copenhagen. The church stands in Christianshavn, the canal district built in the seventeenth century on reclaimed land across the harbour from the old city.

The church itself is Dutch Baroque. It was designed by Lambert van Haven, building began in 1682 and it was consecrated in 1696. Laid out as a Greek cross, it has walls of red and yellow brick on a granite base. For more than half a century it stood without its crowning feature. The spire was added only in 1749–1752 to a design by Lauritz de Thurah: an octagonal timber-framed structure, with an external spiral stair that coils anticlockwise around it towards the top, where a gilded globe carries a figure of Christ. The spire reaches about 90 metres, and the climb to the summit is some 400 steps, the last 150 of them on the open outer stair, with views across the rooftops, the harbour and the Øresund. Jules Verne used the tower in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, where the professor's nephew is made to climb it to cure his fear of heights.

Inside, the high altar was designed by the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger and shows Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The great organ, built by the Botzen brothers in 1698–1700 and bearing the gilded monogram of King Christian V, is famous for resting on two carved elephants. The tower also houses a carillon of 48 bells, the largest in Northern Europe.

Copenhagen, the Danish capital, grew from a medieval trading town on the Øresund into a royal city of palaces and canals; Christianshavn, with its quays, warehouses and houseboats, is one of its most distinctive quarters.

Getting there

The church is in Christianshavn, about 1.5 km from the centre of Copenhagen. Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup (CPH), is about 7 km to the south-east. Christianshavn Metro station, on lines M1 and M2, is a short walk away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Capital Region of Denmark 11The Most Beautiful Places in Denmark 18The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Denmark 5The Most Beautiful Churches 186The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Church of Our Saviour is a baroque church in Copenhagen, Denmark, most famous for the external spiral winding staircase that can be climbed to the top, offering extensive views over central Copenhagen. It is also noted for its carillon, which plays melodies every hour from 8 am to midnight.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

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