Royal Library

In 1648, King Frederick III founded the Royal Library, which included the entire collection of European literature in Copenhagen. For more than a hundred years, only representatives of the royal family and a limited circle of close associates could visit it. It was not until 1793 that the Royal Library gained public access to all available works.

In 1989, the library’s collections were merged with two more collections, the University of Copenhagen Library and the Danish National Library of Natural History and Medicine. Putting all the books in one place is absolutely impossible, so the Royal Library is in four buildings. The oldest of them is on the island of Slotsholmen and is a copy of the chapel in the residence of Charlemagne in the city of Aachen.

The modern building was built in 1999. Made of black granite, steel and mirror glass, it quickly earned the nickname “Black Diamond”. The stone for the new library building was brought from Zimbabwe. This is a one-of-a-kind "absolutely black" granite, which after polishing resembles glass. The building itself has an irregular complex shape, looking at which you might think that the library is tilting in different directions at the same time.