The Old Town is a living picture of life as it used to be in the old Danish market towns. The Old Town is the only museum of its kind, and the museum has welcomed more than three million visitors in the last ten years. The Old Town is an international museum, and we find our inspiration in other museums such as Zuiderzeemuseum in Holland, Beamish in the UK and Plimoth Plantation in the USA.

Everything that we do is based on study and research; however, we do not want our exhibitions and presentations to be purely academic. There is no reason why visiting a museum need not be amusing. High-brow knowledge and overbearing pedagogism can easily spoil the experience. If people visiting the museum are first able to enjoy themselves, then they will be more open to the thoughts and insight which the museum is trying to foster.

Thus, The Old Town is today a living museum. The museum’s visitors can meet the people of the past, see their living rooms and kitchens and smell their gardens. They can have a go at playing the traditional games and explore the museum’s large collections and exhibitions. They can stroke the horses, and will need to watch out for the geese. They can enjoy a draught beer in the beer cellar and coffee and cake in the tea garden. The Old Town is a town filled with adventure, where you can see, hear, smell, taste, try, discover – and understand.

The museum is like a Chinese box. When you open it, one room after the other is revealed each with a different theme. Historical buildings, good craftsmanship, living-quarters, trade, gardens, silverware, toys, clothing, clocks and watches – and living history. Recently, the museum’s visitors have had the opportunity of watching the craftsmen reconstructing the old Mintmaster’s Mansion, a building which represents Copenhagen in the early days of absolutism. The carpenters have erected the giant timber frame, the bricklayers have laid the roof and built the gables, and the painters have given the Mintmaster’s Mansion the colour it had in the 1730s when it was one of the most exclusive private properties in the capital.

Here, at the beginning of a new millennium, craftsmen and conservators are working on restoring the historical interior, and in a _couple of years, the reconstruction of the Mintmaster’s Mansion will have progressed so far that visitors to The Old Town will be able to step inside and experience the light playing on the panels and tapestries and on the exquisite bird ceiling. The painter is long forgotten, but the ceiling still remains. Facts · was founded in 1909 as the world’s first open-air museum for urban cultural history· is Denmark’s only three-star museum outside the Copenhagen area

· has an average of 320,000 visitors a year, of which approximately 130,000 are foreigners · today consists of 75 historic houses from 20 towns across Denmark, 27 living rooms, smaller rooms and kitchens, 34 workshops and shops as well as a pharmacy, a school, a post office, a custom house, a theatre and historical gardens · houses large, national collections of clocks and watches, furniture, stoves, silverware, delftware, toys and clothing · is open all year round · is the home of the Danish Centre of Urban History which is run in cooperation with Aarhus University · has a research library with 100,000 volumes

· has an annual turnover of 20 million Danish kroner, to which must be added major projects such as the Mintmaster’s Mansion, the Living Museum and the publication of a book in two volumes on Danish clockmakers · receives a total of 7.5 million Danish kroner in state and municipal subsidies, while the museum itself has to find revenues of approximately 12 million Danish kroner · today has 4,600 members of the society Friends of the Old Town, which was founded in 1927