Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Step through the doors and the air changes. It is warm, slightly damp, and it smells faintly of soil and leaves. Above you, a glass dome lets in a pale northern light. Below it, tall palm trees rise from the floor of a museum. Somewhere close by, water trickles into a pool. You are in Copenhagen, a short walk from the noise of the city's central boulevard. For a moment, though, it feels like a greenhouse built for marble gods.

This is the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The name sounds complicated, so let us take it apart. "Glyptotek" comes from a Greek root that means carved. So this is, quite literally, a collection of carvings. And "Ny Carlsberg" means New Carlsberg. Yes, that Carlsberg, the beer. The museum exists because a brewer fell in love with sculpture, and he had the money to follow that love a very long way.

The brewer was Carl Jacobsen. His father had founded the Carlsberg brewery and named it after his son. Here is the first surprise. Father and son did not get along in business. Carl went on to run his own brewery, and he called it New Carlsberg, to set it apart from his father's. That word, "new", is still sitting in the museum's name today, a small trace of a family quarrel in the late nineteenth century.

Carl Jacobsen spent decades buying art. He bought ancient sculpture from the Mediterranean world, and he bought modern French work from his own time. Over the years his collection grew too large for his home. So he gave it to the public, and the city helped to provide this site. The museum opened in the late 1890s. Then it grew again, with a second wing finished in the early twentieth century. A modern addition followed in the 1990s.

Look up at the building from outside, if you came in from the street. The older part is made of warm red brick, with pale stone details and a heavy, solemn entrance. It was designed by the Danish architect Vilhelm Dahlerup. The later wing, by Hack Kampmann, is cooler and more classical. The two styles meet around this winter garden. The garden is the hinge of the whole museum. Every route seems to lead back here.

In the middle of the garden, near the water, find a large sculpture of a reclining woman. Small children climb over her and around her. This is the Water Mother, by the Danish sculptor Kai Nielsen. She is heavy, calm, and slightly strange. Many visitors walk past her on the way to the famous rooms. But take a minute. The sound of the water, the green leaves, the soft figure... it is the best place in the building to sit down and slow your breathing.

Now to the oldest things in the house. The ancient collection covers Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Etruscans. The Etruscans were the people of central Italy before Rome rose to power. In these rooms you walk past tomb figures, painted coffins, gods, athletes, and emperors. The light is often soft and even. That is deliberate. Marble needs gentle light so that the eye can follow the shape of a cheek or the fold of a robe.

The Roman portraits are a quiet highlight. Room after room, real faces look back at you. Some are proud. Some are tired. Some look like people you might see on a tram in Copenhagen today. Here is something many visitors miss. Many ancient statues were once painted in bright colours. The museum has done serious research on this, and you may see reconstructions or traces of colour. White marble, it turns out, was not the whole story.

Not far away is another surprise. The museum holds one of the largest groups of funerary portraits from Palmyra outside the Middle East. Palmyra was a desert trading city in what is now Syria. Its people carved portraits of the dead in limestone, to close the openings of family tombs. The faces are direct, with large eyes, heavy jewellery, and carefully carved hair. Standing in front of them, you feel how personal these objects were. Each one was someone's mother, son, or husband.

Then the museum jumps forward almost two thousand years. Carl Jacobsen was a great admirer of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The Glyptotek holds one of the most important Rodin collections outside France. Rodin worked bronze and marble so that it looks soft and alive. You can see his rough tool marks next to polished skin. Walk slowly around each piece. Rodin wanted you to see a sculpture from every side, not only from the front.

The French collection continues with painting. The modern wing from the 1990s, designed by the Danish firm of Henning Larsen, holds works by artists such as Monet, Degas, Cézanne, and Gauguin. Look out for a large group of small bronze dancers by Degas. Degas is famous for paintings of ballet dancers, but these bronzes show another side of his work. The figures twist and stretch. They feel like quick notes from a rehearsal, frozen in metal.

Danish art has a place here too. The museum holds sculpture and painting from the Danish Golden Age, a period in the first half of the nineteenth century when art in Denmark grew in confidence. These works are calmer and more local. You see Danish light, Danish faces, and a careful, gentle way of looking at the world. After the drama of Rome and Paris, they feel like coming home.

Before you leave, think about where you are standing. Outside, the square in front of the museum carries Dante's name, and a tall column rises there. Across the road is the Tivoli amusement park. The city hall and the central station are a few minutes away. All around, Copenhagen moves fast. In here, a brewer's dream of carved stone has stood still for more than a century, open to anyone who walks in.

So take one last look at the palms under the glass. Listen to the water near the Water Mother. Notice how the light falls differently on brick, on marble, and on bronze. When you step back outside, the cold air will feel sharper, and the traffic louder. But you may find yourself looking at faces in the street a little more carefully, the way the Romans in these rooms were once looked at, long ago.