Standing along Copenhagen’s waterfront is the Black Diamond, a Neomodernist complex completed in 1999 as part of the Royal Danish Library. It houses numerous public facilities in addition to the library, and one of its hidden gem is the Treasury.
Opened in 2009, the free exhibit is in an unassuming corner and can easily be missed, but enter the room and you’ll find an incredible collection of rare books, from a Gutenberg Bible to Audubon’s The Birds of America.
The Danish books on display are also impressive, including a 13th-century manuscript of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, a heart-shaped book of love poems from the 1550s, a spellbook (Cyprianus) by cunningman Søren Christensen, and Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s personal diary. There is also an original Hergé drawing of Tintin and Captain Haddock in a visitors’ book of the hotel he had stayed when he visited in Denmark in 1956.
