The Marselisborg district

Facts

Commoners provide King with a home

By Søren Bitsch Christensen, Stadsarkivar (21 stories)

Marselisborg is the oldest and wealthiest district of Aarhus. in 1896, the city council purchased the Marselisborg manor and estate from Minister of the Interior H.P. Ingerslev for the princely sum of 1.2 million kroner. Two years later, King Christian X was presented with a large estate and a summer residence by grateful citizens. In 1902, Marselisborg Palace was completed. The fine location with its sea view and royal neighbour made Marselisborg a desirable district for society's elite. Within a decade, mansion houses abounded in the area.

Public place

Selected entry

Town planning to keep peers with peers

Story written by Søren Bitsch Christensen

Time / Periode 1896 1898

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The Marselisborg district forms an offshoot of the Frederiksbjerg district. Frederiksbjerg was developed on the land acquired by the Municipality of Aarhus in 1896. A town plan was drawn up in 1898 by the architect Hack Kampmann and the engineer Charles Ambt, who proposed to create a diversified and highly segregated urban zone. They wrote that people of different classes should not have to live door to door: ”One type of residential building would not complement the other, and would be a mutual eyesore and hence of little benefit or pleasure for the residents”. The Marselisborg district is not located exactly where the town planners had intended. But a walk from the park in Marselisborg across Ingerslevs Boulevard to Langenæs is a whistle-stop tour down a sliding social scale: first the grand properties of the privileged and wealthy, then onwards to the middle-class part of town, and finally the homes of the working classes.