Hans Christian Andersen's House
Largely underground museum by Kengo Kuma on the Odense street where Hans Christian Andersen was born.
Odense has commemorated its most famous son since 1908, when a museum opened beside the house in Hans Jensens Stræde where Hans Christian Andersen is said to have been born. The present building was inaugurated on 30 June 2021 and was designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma with the Danish practice Cornelius+Vöge and the landscape office MASU Planning. Most of it lies below ground, so that at street level a visitor sees only low circular pavilions with slatted timber screens among curving hedges.
The displays are arranged as a walk through Andersen's imagination rather than as a chronological biography, combining manuscripts, paper cuttings and his own drawings with commissioned installations, sound and film; an audio guide is available in five languages. The older Memorial Hall, decorated in the 1930s with frescoes by Niels Larsen Stevns, forms part of the route. A children's world called Ville Vau adjoins the museum, and Andersen's childhood home in Munkemøllestræde is a few minutes' walk away.
Highlights
- Largely underground museum by Kengo Kuma, opened in 2021
- Circular timber-screened pavilions set among curving hedges
- Memorial Hall with 1930s frescoes by Niels Larsen Stevns
- Ville Vau, a costumed play world for children
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