Christiansborg Palace Tickets

Stand under the Great Hall and the ceiling lifts far above your head, while eleven modern woven panels run the length of the walls, tracing a thousand years of Danish history from the Vikings to the present day. This is a working palace, not a relic. The monarch still receives heads of state in these rooms, parliament sits in the same building, and beneath the courtyard lie the stone foundations of the castle Bishop Absalon raised on this spot in 1167.

What will you see inside Christiansborg Palace?

Christiansborg holds the Royal Reception Rooms still used by the Danish monarch, the excavated ruins of two earlier castles beneath the courtyard, the preserved Royal Kitchen and the working Royal Stables. Above it all rises the tower, the tallest in Copenhagen, which is free to climb. In practice it is several separate sights gathered under one long roof.

The Royal Reception Rooms are the grand heart of the visit. You walk through the Throne Room, whose balcony is where each new Danish monarch is proclaimed, the red Velvet Room, and the Great Hall, hung with the eleven woven panels that Bjorn Norgaard designed for Queen Margrethe II. They read like a painted comic of Danish history, from Norse myth to the modern age, and the room is still set for state banquets. In the Alexander Hall, a long marble frieze by the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen wraps the walls.

Down a staircase you reach the ruins. When the current palace was built, workers uncovered the flint and limestone remains of Bishop Absalon's 1167 fortress and the medieval Copenhagen Castle that replaced it. They are preserved in a cool, dim undercroft with walkways and clear explanation, the oldest layer of the city you can actually stand inside. It is a quiet, atmospheric contrast to the gilded rooms above.

Two more parts often surprise people. The Royal Kitchen has been kept as it was for the last great royal banquet of the 1920s, its long copper batterie of pots gleaming on the walls and the original stoves still in place. The Royal Stables, meanwhile, are still in use: the horses that pull the royal carriages live here, alongside gala harnesses stitched with gold thread and a small carriage collection. Christiansborg is also the only building on earth that houses a country's parliament, supreme court and prime minister's office at once, which is why security and the working life of the state are part of the atmosphere.

The present palace is the third to stand here. Fires destroyed its predecessors in 1794 and again in 1884, and the granite-faced building you see today was finished in 1928. That layered history is exactly why one ticket can move you from a medieval cellar to a room used last month for a royal dinner.

How do Christiansborg tickets work, and which one should you buy?

Christiansborg sells two different tickets. The full Palace Ticket covers every indoor area and costs 225 DKK at the door or 215 DKK online. A cheaper ticket for the Royal Reception Rooms alone is 150 DKK at the door, 140 online. Under-18s go free, and the Copenhagen Card includes the lot. The tower is free for everyone, ticket or not.

For a first visit, the full Palace Ticket is the one to pick. It bundles the four paid areas that sit apart from one another across Slotsholmen: the Reception Rooms, the underground ruins, the Royal Kitchen and the Royal Stables. Buying them together costs far less than the areas would add up to singly, and it saves you sorting out a second ticket if you decide on the day that you want to see the ruins too. If you are short on time or budget and only want the state rooms, the Reception Rooms ticket is the honest cheaper option.

Booking ahead is worth it in summer and around holidays, when the Reception Rooms hold the longest lines. The state rooms can also close at short notice when the palace is needed for an official or royal event, so if your trip is tight, it pays to check availability for your date using the booking panel above before you set out. Under-18s enter free but are still counted in the system, and the Copenhagen Card gives cardholders free entry to all the paid parts.

One genuine freebie sits above everything else: the 106-metre tower, the tallest in the city, has a free viewing platform reached by a lift, with a wide look over the rooftops, the harbour and the spires. You do not need a palace ticket to go up, though a timed slot is sometimes required at busy periods. The prices below are the current 2026 figures published by the palace administration.

How long do you need at Christiansborg Palace?

Give the full palace two to three hours. The Reception Rooms take about 45 minutes to an hour on their own, and the ruins, kitchen and stables add another hour or more spread across the complex. If you only have the Reception Rooms ticket, plan on roughly an hour. The free tower is a quick 20 to 30 minutes including the lift queue.

The four paid areas are not all in one door, which catches some visitors out. The Reception Rooms and the ruins share the main palace entrance, but the Royal Stables and the Royal Kitchen sit around the courtyards a short walk away, so budget a few minutes of walking between them. A sensible order is the Reception Rooms first while you are fresh, then the ruins directly below, then out across the yard to the kitchen and stables, finishing with the free ride up the tower.

If you are pacing a wider museum day, Christiansborg works well as a half-day anchor. The whole of Slotsholmen island is compact and walkable, the tower gives you a free rooftop break in the middle, and there is a cafe at the top if you want to sit with the view. Families tend to move faster, since children usually love the ruins and the horses more than the state rooms, so a family visit often lands closer to the two-hour mark.

Know before you go: hours, closed days and getting there

Christiansborg stands on Slotsholmen island in the centre of Copenhagen, a few minutes from Gammel Strand Metro station. The main areas are generally open daily 10:00 to 17:00 through the main season, from late March to the start of November, with shorter and more limited days in winter. Check your date, because the Reception Rooms can close for official events.

Getting there is easy from anywhere in the city. Gammel Strand on the M3 and M4 Metro lines is the closest stop, a flat two-minute walk across the canal to the palace. Kongens Nytorv Metro and the central station are both within a 10 to 15 minute walk, and several buses stop on the surrounding streets. The Copenhagen Card covers all of this public transport as well as entry to the palace, so cardholders pay nothing extra to reach it.

A few practical points. The four areas keep slightly different hours, and the Royal Stables in particular can close on certain weekdays, so glance at the official calendar for the exact day. Large bags go in the cloakroom, and you slip cloth overshoes on before the Reception Rooms to protect the floors. The building is largely step-free with lifts, which is unusual for a palace this old. The table below sums up the essentials.

What can you pair with Christiansborg nearby?

Christiansborg sits on the same small island as the Danish War Museum, and a short walk or one Metro stop puts you at the city's other royal sights. The natural pairings are the Danish War Museum next door, Rosenborg Castle with the crown jewels, and Amalienborg, the monarch's actual winter home. The Copenhagen Card covers all of them.

Stay on Slotsholmen and the Danish War Museum is a two-minute walk through the courtyards, its long cannon hall filling the ground floor of Christian IV's old arsenal. It is quieter than the palace and makes an easy, well-reviewed follow-on. For the crown regalia rather than the state rooms, walk 15 minutes north to Rosenborg Castle, where the Danish crown jewels sit in a vaulted treasury inside a genuine 400-year-old summer palace.

To see where the royal family actually lives today, head toward the harbour to Amalienborg, four rococo palaces around an octagonal square, with the guard changing at noon and private royal apartments open in the museum wing. Together these trace the Danish monarchy from its medieval foundations here on Slotsholmen to the present house. A Copenhagen Card prices the whole royal circuit in one purchase, and you can see exactly what it covers on the Copenhagen Card site. There is more on the three palaces that stood on this spot at the official Christiansborg pages and background on Wikipedia.

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