Denmark sets March opening for long-delayed natural history museum

Denmark will open its new Natural History Museum in Copenhagen on March 6, 2027, 13 years after the project’s original target date, the museum said in a press release distributed through the travel press service TravMedia.

The museum, part of the University of Copenhagen, will house Denmark’s national collections on a single site in the Botanical Garden near Nørreport Station, with exhibition galleries dug beneath the garden.

It will open with eight exhibitions — Universe, Earth, Life, Denmark, Arctic, Biodiversity, Humans and Ocean Hall, the museum said.

The opening comes years later than first planned. The state and the university decided on the project in 2009 and aimed to open in 2014, Danish news agency Ritzau reported, before the project fell behind schedule and ran over budget.

The target then slipped repeatedly. The Novo Nordisk Foundation said in 2014 that the museum would open in 2020.

The museum said in 2018 that it expected to open in 2022, when it announced a DKK 166 million gift for exhibitions from the A.P. Møller Foundation.