Royal Kunstkammer of Denmark

Posted by Suzanne Hill Dec 14, 2006

In "The Princess and the Pea," the discriminating princess cannot sleep comfortably until an offending pea is removed from beneath the twenty mattresses upon which she lay. In the famous ending, the author tells us that "the pea was put into the museum, where it can still be seen, if no one has taken it!"

Today we no longer realize that this exclamation alludes to a particular museum and to a certain act of theft. In the 1600s the kings of Denmark had created a Kunstkammer or early museum housing all sorts of oddities and objets d’art. Two famous objects were the fifth-century

This famous burglary from the Danish Royal

Golden Horns found in Denmark - one in 1639 and one in 1734. They are embellished with figures and animals that most likely tell stories from Norse or Celtic mythology. In 1802, a thief stole the horns from the Royal Kunstkammer and melted down the gold in his kitchen. Ironically the recovered gold was not used to make copies of the horns, but was instead used to make coins.Kunstkammer in Copenhagen is the subject of Hans Christian Andersen’s closing line of his fairy tale.