Knuthenborg Safari Park

Knuthenborg is a private estate near Maribo whose park, enclosed by a wall running for several kilometres, opened as a safari park in 1970. It is the largest of its kind in northern Europe and the format is simple: you drive your own car at walking pace along a route through big paddocks where giraffes, rhinos, zebras, antelope and camels graze, then leave it and walk the enclosures for tigers, wolves and smaller species. The estate parkland itself is old and unusual, with exotic trees planted in the nineteenth century and long avenues between them. Playgrounds and a dinosaur-themed section are included, and the whole thing takes a full day.

History

The park lies on the estate of Knuthenborg, formerly the medieval manor of Årsmarke and once the largest private estate in Denmark, which became part of the new county of Knuthenborg in 1714. Its origins go back to 1867, when Eggert Christoffer Knuth (1838-1874) built a 7.4 km wall around his property with stones fished out of the Smålandsfarvandet and hired the English landscape architect Edward Milner, whose plans of 1870 laid out a park for his collection of rare plants and rhododendrons, with several hundred species of exotic trees and shrubs. The park was placed under a preservation order in 1926, a zoological garden with 70 deer opened by Swan Lake in 1950, and in 1969 Count Adam W. Knuth brought in the first exotic animals, antelopes, plains zebras and ostriches from Kenya, followed by white rhinos. It is now the largest safari park in northern Europe, covering 660 hectares (Wikipedia, Knuthenborg Safaripark).

Highlights

• The drive-through - giraffes, rhinos, zebras and antelope alongside your own car.
• The monkey section - a stretch of road where monkeys climb on vehicles, with a bypass for the cautious.
• Tiger and wolf enclosures - walk-through areas with raised viewing platforms.
• The old estate park - nineteenth century exotic trees and long avenues around the route.

When to go

The park opens for the warmer months and closes for much of the winter, so check dates before travelling. Late spring and early autumn combine active animals with short queues. July weekends are the busiest of the year. Rain matters more than it sounds, since half the day is spent on foot.

Practical notes

You need a car; there is no realistic way to do the drive-through without one, and hire vehicles pick up scratches in the monkey section. Entry is expensive for a family and food inside more so. Distances are long and tiring on foot, animals drift to the far corners of the paddocks in hot weather, and the park is closed for a large part of the year.

Nearby

Maribo and its lakes are just south; the Baltic beaches of Lolland are half an hour away.

Key facts