Everything about Hirschholm Palace totally explained
Hirschholm Palace, also known as
Hørsholm Palace, was a royal palace located in present-day
Hørsholm municipality in
Denmark until 1810. It developed a notorious reputation in connection with its role in the affair between
Johann Friedrich Struensee and Queen
Caroline Mathilda in the
1770s.
The palace was designed by
Lauritz de Thurah for King
Christian VI and his consort Queen
Sophie Magdalene, and was intended as their summer residence.
It was built on a site that had been used since the
Middle Ages. The site was first used as a fortification and was called Hørningsholm. Queen
Margrete I took possession of the site in 1391. At the end of the
1500s Frederik II and
Christian IV built a small royal hunting castle (
jagtslot) on the site. The estate, which covered a large area (the present day municipalities of
Hørsholm,
Karlebo,
Birkerød and a part of
Allerød) was called the Noble Estate of Hørsholm (
adelsgodset Hørsholm), and was endowed to various noblemen and members of the royal court.
By the middle of the
1600s a royal tradition had developed whereby the ruling king bestowed Hørsholm Palace to his consort, and it was used as a summer residence. The estate was now being driven directly by the royal house, and income went to the Queen.
Frederick IV’s consort Queen
Louise owned Hørsholm Palace between 1700 and 1721. She had it modernised, and a number of the farm buildings she'd built still stand to this day.
The de Thurah-designed
baroque palace was completed in
1744, and was one of the most impressive building works of that period. It was referred to as "The
Versailles of the North". When the king died in 1746 it became Sophie Magdalene’s residence as
Queen Dowager. She carried out a number of change on the estate that pointed towards the
agricultural reforms that would come to play a big role in the country during the coming decades.
De Thurah’s drawings of the palace were published in "
Den danske Vitruvius" ("The Danish
Vitruvius") in 1746-1749.
The Dowager Queen died in 1770, and the palace was taken over by the
schizophrenic King Christian VII who used it as a summer residence for his family and court. On
June 17,
1771 the royal family and court took summer residence at the Palace, and on
July 7 Caroline Mathilde gave birth to her second child, Princess
Louise Augusta, whose father was almost certainly Struensee. That summer has come to be referred to as the "Hirschholm Summer" in Danish history.
After that summer, and after the arrest of Struensee and the Queen on
January 17,
1772, and the subsequent execution of Struensee, and the banishment and imprisonment of the Queen, the palace stood empty until 1810. At that time
Frederik VI had the now dilapidated palace torn down for use as build materials for the rebuilding of
Christiansborg Castle, which had burned to the ground in the fire of
1794.
In 1822-1823 a little church designed by architect
Christian Frederik Hansen was built on the spot. The park surrounding the church still bears evidence of the original palace garden.
The Hørsholm Local Museum (
Hørsholm Egns Museum) has a permanent exhibit about the palace, the royal affair and its fate.
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