One of the most astonishing churches in the world, Copenhagen’s Grundtvigs Kirke is an all-time example of shooting your shot.

The culmination of a project to turn sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen into a national icon for the emerging Danish nation-state–Thorvaldsen as a sort of Danish demigod with this museum-tomb as his pantheon–this is a distinctive example of national mythmaking, architectural innovation, & adaptive reuse.

Chief Architect of the DSB Heinrich Wenck wanted to create a station "suitable for Denmark–for our country's situation and its character–so that the last impression that departing Danes got was the same as that which met the arriving foreigners: something Danish”.

Gyldenløvesgade has changed remarkably little in the last 115 years or so–but that lack of visible change obscures a pretty wild story. That brick Neo-Renaissance building on the left with the eyecatching gables? Super interesting, it turns out.

It’s one of the first high-rises in central Copenhagen, a gesamtkunstwerk designed by one of Denmark’s most famous architects, but the irony of the SAS Royal Hotel is that only the least notable part of the building–its architecture–survives unchanged.