National Museum of Denmark Tickets

A gilded bronze disc, pulled by a small horse on spoked wheels, sits in a case not far inside the door. The Sun Chariot is around 3,400 years old, dug out of a Danish bog in 1902, and it is only the start. The National Museum of Denmark runs from Stone Age flint through Viking silver into whole floors of ethnographic collections, and it is the single best place to understand where this country came from.

What will you see inside the National Museum of Denmark?

The headline pieces are the Bronze Age Sun Chariot, the silver Gundestrup Cauldron, the oak-coffin grave of the Egtved Girl and a first-rate Viking hall of swords, jewellery and runestones. Above and around them sit ethnographic galleries from Greenland to Asia and a hands-on Children's Museum. Very little here is filler.

Start with the prehistory rooms, because this is where Denmark keeps its most famous objects. The Sun Chariot, or Solvognen, is the one on every postcard: a bronze horse drawing a sun disc gilded on one side, a Bronze Age model of the sun crossing the sky. A few rooms on, the Gundestrup Cauldron is a large silver vessel worked with gods, animals and processions, pulled from a bog in northern Jutland and dated to the last centuries BC.

The oak-coffin graves are quieter but just as striking. The Egtved Girl was a teenager buried around 1370 BC in a hollowed log, and her woollen cord skirt, belt and even a few strands of hair survived the acidic peat. Cases nearby hold the long curved bronze lur horns and gold from across the early ages, so you follow the story object by object rather than through text panels alone.

Then comes the Viking hall, which is the reason many visitors book at all. Real swords, axes, silver hoards, glass beads and carved stones set out the reach of the Norse world, from raiding to trade routes that ran to Byzantium and beyond. Upstairs the story keeps going into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with royal treasures, church art and the old Kunstkammer curiosities that started the collection.

The upper floors turn outward. The ethnographic collections gather material from Greenland and the Arctic, from Asia, Africa and Oceania, one of the older such collections in Europe. There is also a run of classical and Near Eastern antiquities, including Egyptian mummies. It is a lot of ground, which is exactly why a plan helps.

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

There is one main ticket for the National Museum, and it covers the permanent collections and the Children's Museum together. A standard adult ticket is 150 DKK at the door or 135 DKK booked online, and anyone under 18 goes free. The ticket stays valid for a full year, and Copenhagen Card holders enter at no extra cost.

The museum was free for years, so this is worth saying plainly: general admission is now paid. The trade-off is a genuinely useful one, since a single adult ticket is valid for twelve months from purchase, so you can come back for the Viking hall one day and the ethnographic floors another without paying twice. Temporary blockbuster shows sometimes carry a separate charge on top.

Booking online saves a little and lets you walk past the desk on a busy afternoon. If you are visiting in the school holidays or on a wet weekend, it is worth checking the latest dates and prices on the booking panel above before you leave your hotel, since the entrance hall can back up around midday. On a quiet weekday morning the door queue is rarely a problem.

Under-18s enter free, which makes this one of the best-value family stops in the city once you factor in the Children's Museum. If you expect to visit several paid museums over two or three days, the Copenhagen Card includes the National Museum along with the trains and Metro, and can work out cheaper than separate tickets. The figures below are the current 2026 prices from the museum.

Is the National Museum of Denmark still free?

No. The National Museum used to be free, but general admission is now charged: 150 DKK for adults at the door, or 135 DKK online. Under-18s still enter free, and the paid adult ticket is valid for a full year. A few older guidebooks and blog posts are simply out of date on this point.

The change trips up a lot of visitors who read that Copenhagen's big national museums were free to enter. That was true here for a long time, and it is why the correction matters. Today the only major Copenhagen museum that is genuinely free to everyone, year-round, is the David Collection over by the King's Garden. The National Gallery of Denmark and the open-air museum at Lyngby are now paid as well.

What has not changed is the under-18 rule. Children and teenagers go free, so a family really only pays for the adults, and the Children's Museum is bundled into that same ticket. Because the adult ticket lasts a year, locals treat the place almost like a season pass, dropping in for one wing at a time. You can confirm the current admission on the National Museum's own site before you travel.

How long do you need at the National Museum?

Plan two to three hours for a first visit. Ninety minutes covers the prehistory rooms, the Viking hall and a quick pass through the ethnographic floors. Give it a half-day if you read the cases, bring children to the Children's Museum, or want the classical antiquities and the Renaissance rooms as well. It is a big museum, so pace matters.

The layout rewards a route rather than a wander. Most people start on the prehistory floor, since the Sun Chariot, the Gundestrup Cauldron and the oak-coffin graves are all there, then climb into the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the royal collections above. The Viking hall usually anchors the visit, and it is the room where groups slow right down.

Families should build in time for the Children's Museum, where kids can climb aboard a mock Viking ship, dress in period clothes and step into an old merchant's house and a classroom from the past. It runs long if the children take to it, so it is smart to leave it for last rather than fight the clock. The museum cafe and a good shop sit off the central hall for a break in the middle.

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

The museum sits at Ny Vestergade 10 on Frederiksholms Kanal in central Copenhagen, a short walk from Copenhagen Central Station and the Gammel Strand Metro. From April to October it opens daily 10:00 to 17:00; from November to March it keeps the same hours but closes on Mondays. Under-18s are free, and the Copenhagen Card covers entry and transport.

Getting there is easy from almost any hotel. Copenhagen Central Station is a five to ten minute walk, the Gammel Strand Metro on the M3 and M4 lines is closer still, and several buses stop along the canal. The building itself is the old Prince's Palace, an eighteenth-century rococo mansion, so the setting is part of the visit before you reach the first case.

A few practicalities. Large bags and coats go in the cloakroom, photography without flash is fine in the permanent galleries, and step-free access is good for a historic building, with lifts between floors. The winter Monday closure is the main thing to check, since it catches people out. The at-a-glance table sums up the essentials, and live hours sit on the official site.

What can you pair with the National Museum nearby?

The National Museum sits a few minutes from Slotsholmen, so it pairs naturally with the royal and military sights across the canal. The easy combinations are the Danish War Museum in the old Royal Arsenal, Christiansborg Palace with its ruins and tower, and Rosenborg Castle a little further north for the crown jewels. The Copenhagen Card covers all four.

For a history-heavy morning, walk over the canal to the Danish War Museum, where the 163-metre cannon hall runs the length of Christian IV's 1604 arsenal. It is the sister site to this museum, quieter than the palaces, and a natural next stop. From there Christiansborg Palace is barely two minutes on, with the Royal Reception Rooms and the medieval ruins under the courtyard.

If you would rather swap deep history for royal glitter, Rosenborg Castle holds the Danish crown jewels a short walk or one Metro stop north, set in the King's Garden. A Copenhagen Card ties the whole cluster together and pays for the transport between them, which you can price on the Copenhagen Card site. For background on the collection itself, there is a full overview on Wikipedia.

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