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ABOUT THE BUILDINGS
The Library, which, since 1996, has been an independent national institution, was originally part of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. On the foundation of the Academy of Arts in 1754, the Library was allotted rooms in Charlottenborg Palace, which, since then, has been the old main address of the Academy.
In 1883 the Library moved into one of the side wings of the Charlottenborg Exhibition Building, and here it gradually expanded so that it currently fills more than half of the basement. In the year 2000 the Library returned to Charlottenborg itself, as the Collection of Architectural Drawings and the Art-Historical Image Archive is now housed in the Palace's south wing while all the actual library functions continue to be confined to the Exhibition Building.
I 2007, following the fusion with the Museum's library, the Danish National Art Library opened a department in the Danish National Gallery. The Department is at the disposal of the Gallery's staff, visitors to the Study Room for graphics and drawings and the Museum's visitors in general.
Charlottenborg is a major monument in the old Danish Baroque style. The Palace was built as part of absolutism's grandly projected expansion of the city of royal residence around Kongens Nytorv (the King's New Market) and Nyhavn (the New Harbour). The man who commissioned the work was Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, half-brother of King Christian V. The large, originally three-winged edifice was constructed in the years 1672-1677. Along the central axis of the Palace, on the market place directly in front of its facade, the equestrian statue of the absolutist monarch forms the unifying point.
Originally the palace courtyard opened onto the spacious garden which stretched the entire length of Nyhavn. In 1683 the perimeter of the building was closed with a lower, fourth wing of two storeys. In the central, vaulted pavilion, the cupola room with its magnificent stucco ceiling is a well-preserved example of an early Danish Baroque interior.
The south wing's so-called Italian Stairs (from which there is access to the Library's study collections) is the earliest preserved Danish example of a monumental, interior stairwell.
From the Italian Stairs there is access to the Library's study room for Danish architecture and art. At the end of the 18th century the study room was part of the apartment whose first resident was the architect N.-H. Jardin, later it was the home of another architect Professor C.F. Harsdorff. In the middle of the 19th century the room served partly as an exhibition space for the casts collection of the Academy of Arts, and partly as a reading room for the Library.
The Charlottenborg Exhibition Building was built in 1883 by the two historicist architects Albert Jensen and Ferdinand Meldahl. The structure is situated in the former Botanical Garden immediately behind Charlottenborg. It is oriented along the Palace's central axis, from whose originally closed courtyard room there once opened in the loggia under the cupola room another loggia with an unobstructed view out towards the main gateway of the Exhibition Building.
In one of the side wings a typical 19th century library room was created, which is without doubt the only one of its kind in Denmark which is still used by the institution for which it was built. In the remaining ground-floor space of the Exhibition Building, the Academy's cast collection was exhibited. From around 1904 the ground-floor was divided up into areas for a variety of purposes. The Renaissance-inspired exhibition hall with the multi-coloured tiled floor and the characteristic, triumphal-arch motif was thus divided, the arches bricked up and the light excluded. Through a programme of rebuilding only recently completed the central hall is now restored to its beautiful original state. The walls have once more regained their original shades of ochre, the floor has been restored and the light now streams in again through the reopened arches. The restored central hall now serves as the Library's lending section) (see illustration), knowledge centre (see illustration), work space (see illustration) and stack room (see illustration); and from here there is once more direct access to the old reading room (see illustration), which has not been touched by the rebuilding, but by a sensitive refurnishing is restored to its original appearance.
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