Grundtvig's Church

Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint won the competition to build a church commemorating the theologian and hymn writer N. F. S. Grundtvig, and construction ran from 1921 to 1940, finished by his son. The idea was to take the stepped gables of Danish village churches and push them to a monumental scale, and the west front rises in vertical bands that read like the pipes of an organ, forty-nine metres high. Everything is one material: about six million pale yellow bricks, hand-sorted for colour and laid by hand, inside and out, with no plaster, no stone dressing and almost no ornament, so the nave is a vaulted brick hall of extraordinary plainness and height. The surrounding housing was built in the same brick and by the same designers.

History

Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint won the competition for a church named after the philosopher, pastor and hymn writer N. F. S. Grundtvig in 1913, but the foundation stone was laid only after World War I, on 8 September 1921, Grundtvig's birthday. Building went on mainly until 1926, when the tower section was completed and inaugurated in 1927 as the so-called Tower Church; work on the interior and the neighbouring buildings continued until 1940 and was finished by his son Kaare Klint after Jensen-Klint's death in 1930. The church stands at the centre of a residential development of 1924-36, also in yellow brick and designed by Jensen-Klint to match it (Wikipedia, Grundtvig's Church).

What to look for

• The organ-pipe west front - stepped gables at forty-nine metres.
• A nave built only in brick - no plaster or stone anywhere inside.
• Six million hand-sorted bricks - the whole church in one material.
• The matching housing quarter - the surrounding blocks in the same brick.

When to go

Year round. One hour. Weekday mornings; the church closes to visitors during services and events, and hours are shorter on Sundays. The interior is best on a bright day when light rakes down the vaults.

Things to know

It is well outside the centre and takes half an hour to reach. Opening hours are limited and change seasonally, so check before travelling out. The interior is austere to the point that some visitors find it bleak. There are no facilities.

Nearby

Bispebjerg Cemetery is nearby; central Copenhagen is a bus ride south.

Key facts