Roskilde Cathedral
Roskilde Domkirke
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- A granite pillar in the Chapel of the Magi records the heights of visiting kings: Peter the Great, measured in 1716, is the tallest mark, Chulalongkorn of Siam the shortest.
- The Treaty of Roskilde between Denmark–Norway and Sweden was signed inside the cathedral itself on 26 February 1658.
- Swedish troops then carried off Margrethe I's golden gown from beside her tomb; it is now kept in Uppsala Cathedral.
- In 1806 a coppersmith sawing an auctioned crucifix into firewood found a hidden golden cross inside its head, holding a supposed splinter of the True Cross.
- Christian III's tomb, carved in Antwerp by Cornelis Floris, was held during the Spanish sack of the city in 1576 until the sculptor's widow paid a ransom.
- The wrought-iron screen of Christian IV's chapel, forged in 1619, carries a rhyming boast in German by its smith, Caspar Fincke.
- Edvard Eriksen's wife Eline modelled both the Little Mermaid and the marble figure of Grief beside Christian IX's tomb.
- Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, born a Danish princess, rested here from 1928 until 2006, when her coffin was returned to St Petersburg.
- The 1968 spire fire was later traced to craftsmen smoking and using blowtorches in the loft despite a total ban on heat sources.
- According to legend, a canon carrying the skull of St Lucius to Roskilde jumped overboard in the Great Belt, walked on water and drove away a sea demon.
Why it is worth it
Roskilde Cathedral is both a building and a family vault for an entire royal line. Since the fifteenth century it has been the main burial church of Denmark's monarchs. Each generation added its own chapel, in the style of its own time, so a walk around the brick church passes through almost eight hundred years of European architecture. Its twin spires, added by King Christian IV in 1633, rise above the rooftops of the old town.
The cathedral standing today was begun in the late twelfth century, under Bishop Absalon or his successor Peder Sunesen. It replaced an earlier church of travertine built around 1080. Brick-making had reached Denmark only around 1160, and Roskilde became one of the first Gothic cathedrals in Scandinavia built of brick. It helped spread Brick Gothic across northern Europe. The building marks the shift from Romanesque to the new French Gothic: the choir was consecrated in 1225, the main body was complete by about 1280, and the west towers were finished in 1405. In 1413 the body of Queen Margrethe I was moved here from Sorø, and her sarcophagus stands behind the high altar. After her, kings and queens followed one after another. Christian IV's chapel, in Dutch Renaissance style, was built by the brothers Lorenz and Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger between 1614 and 1641. The domed chapel of Frederick V was started by Caspar Frederik Harsdorff in 1774 and completed in 1825 by his pupil Christian Frederik Hansen. A fourth royal chapel was added between 1915 and 1924. In it, the double tomb of Christian IX and Queen Louise, designed by Hack Kampmann, is guarded by marble mourners carved by Edvard Eriksen, the sculptor of Copenhagen's Little Mermaid.
The city's history is older than the brick church. Roskilde is linked to Harald Bluetooth, who chroniclers say founded it in the 980s and built a wooden church to the Holy Trinity here. The town became a bishop's seat under Cnut the Great and was for centuries one of the leading towns in Denmark. Today it is a city of about 54,000 on Roskilde Fjord. In 1968 one spire caught fire just as its restoration was nearly finished. While the fire was fought, church staff and civil defence volunteers protected the choir stalls, the altar and the royal sarcophagi with damp blankets. UNESCO inscribed the cathedral as a World Heritage Site in 1995. It is still a working Lutheran church.
Getting there
The cathedral stands in the centre of Roskilde, about 30 km west of Copenhagen on the island of Zealand. The city's railway station is on the main line between Copenhagen and western Zealand. Copenhagen Roskilde Airport (RKE), a small regional airfield, is about 7 km away. Copenhagen Airport (CPH) at Kastrup, the country's main international airport, is roughly 36 km to the east.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Roskilde Cathedral, in the city of Roskilde on the island of Zealand (Sjælland) in eastern Denmark, is a cathedral of the Lutheran Church of Denmark.
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