Hans Christian Andersen visited Bakkehuset as a young man and here he found inspiration and support to become a writer.

As a tribute to Kamma Rahbek and Hans Christian Andersen’s friendship and to fledgling writers of the future we have set up a “Fairytale Academy” on the ground floor of the museum for families with children and others who wish to be creative on their own. Inspired by Andersen’s familiar and well-loved fairytales, children and adults can go on discovery in the big chest of drawers. Here they can find lots of intricately worked materials and fairytale elements in the many crates and boxes. You can write in pen and ink, play the princess and the pea, build boxes à la Kamma Rahbek, do shadow theatre or record your very own fairytale in our “H.C. Studio”.

In the first decades of the 19th century Bakkehuset (The Hill House) resonated with conversations of the married couple Kamma and Knud Lyne Rahbek and their illustrious guests. The couple owned the house from 1802 until 1830. In this time they opened their home to the authors, opinion formers and scientists of the age.

Bakkehuset is an authentic Golden Age home. The historic house museum and its surrounding gardens provide an authentic insight into the way of life of the 19th century, its atmosphere and style. A visit to Bakkehuset is a visceral experience of one of the most central periods in Danish cultural history; the period that would become known as the Golden Age. In the Rahbeks’ time the house was a home to luminaries such as Hans Christian Andersen, the poet Adam Oehlenschläger, the scientist H.C. Ørsted, the writer N.F.S. Grundtvig, the hymnist B.S. Ingemann, the dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg and many others. All of them contributed in their own way to the place’s unique atmosphere and history.