The Architecture

The tower was erected as part of the third and current Christiansborg Palace, built in the period 1907-1928. Like the remainder of the main building, the tower is the work of Architect Thorvald Jørgensen (1867-1946).

During the construction period, for various reasons, including overspending the budgets, plans for the tower were repeatedly changed. To cut costs, some of the ornaments were dispensed with. When Christiansborg Palace was completed in 1928, the tower was embellished with only one crown, although Thorvald Jørgensen had originally planned three.

The tower was built in reinforced concrete with a granite façade. Originally, it was roofed with tiles because there was insufficient funding for copper roofing. In 1937, in the wake of a national fundraising campaign, the roof tiles on the tower and main building were replaced with copper. At the start of the new millennium, experts discovered that the copper plating and reinforced concrete were in a lamentable state of repair and had to be refurbished. Refurbishment work took three years, from 2006 to 2009. The roof is currently coppery brown in colour. The elements will weather the metal and give the copper roof a characteristic green colour. The new copper roof is expected to last about 100 years.

On the spire, there are eight copper figures created by sculptor Axel Locher (1879-1941). The 3.10-metre figures depict men and women at work.

The three crowns

Two more crowns were added in 1934. The Home Affairs Minister at the time, Bertel Dahlgaard (The Social Liberal Party) believed that, because the tower had only one crown, it looked too much like Korsør Railway Station.