page_title: Den Gamle By
section_title: Exhibits
hierarchical_section_title: Den Gamle By / Exhibits
caption_attribution_description: English: The Old Town, Århus, Denmark.
context_page_description: Den Gamle By, or The Old Town in English, is an open-air town museum located in the Aarhus Botanical Gardens, in central Aarhus, Denmark. In 1914, the museum opened as the world's first open-air museum of its kind, concentrating on town culture rather than village culture, and to this day it remains one of just a few top rated Danish museums outside Copenhagen, serving more than 400,000 visitors pr. year. Today the museum consists of 75 historical buildings collected from 20 townships in all parts of the country. The town itself is the main attraction but most buildings are open for visitors; rooms are either decorated in the original historical style or organized into larger exhibits of which there are 5 regular with varying themes.
  The museum buildings are organized into a small town of chiefly half-timbered structures originally erected between 1550 and the late 19th century in various parts of the country and later moved to Aarhus during the 20th century. In all there are some 27 rooms, chambers or kitchens, 34 workshops, 10 groceries or shops, 5 historical gardens, a post office, a customs office, a school and a theatre.
context_section_description: There are 5 regular exhibits, The Danish Clock Museum, the Toy Museum, a silverware exhibit, a pottery exhibit and the Textile Museum, in addition to several smaller exhibits. Besides the town itself, these exhibitions form the centrepiece of the museum and contain some of the largest collections of historical artefacts outside Copenhagen. In addition to the regular exhibits the museum holds several special themed exhibits every year with artefacts borrowed from other Danish, and in some cases Scandinavian, cities
  The Toy Museum is situated in the large warehouse from Næstved and contains some 6000 pieces of toys from the 19th century to the 1960s. On the ground floor most boy's toys are displayed including German Märklin cars and Bing trains, mechanical toys from Lehmann, Danish Tekno toys and a somewhat unusual feature - wooden toys produced by inmates of Danish prisons.
  The first floor focuses on the pedagogical use of toys. In the 18th century childhood was increasingly recognized as a special period in a human's life whereas it had earlier perceived as a necessary and difficult period needed to be overcome on the path to becoming a "real" person. In the late 18th century philosophers, doctors and teachers more and more viewed childhood as an important time where parents could influence the child in positive directions. To this end toys became an important tool. It was believed that by giving a child a specific toy it could be led in a specific direction in later life i.e. influence girls to become good housewives and boys to an active, social existence bound for the commercial life of the 19th and 20th centuries. 
  The Danish Clock Museum showcases a fully equipped watch makers shop with workshops for tower watchmaker and ordinary watchmakers. The museum has a large collection of Danish and foreign clocks and watches and shows the development from sun dials and hour glasses to mechanical clocks. The earliest clocks from the 16th century had only one hand to show the hour of the day but later and more sophisticated clocks showed time in fractions of a second and the position of planets.
  The textile museum is essentially spread out over the entire town. The exhibits aims at telling the story of the use of textiles in the home i.e. the introduction of curtains and sofa cushions. During the 19th century a tendency to hide furniture behind textiles erupted. Towels were hidden behind embroidered linen and the stove was hidden behind an embroidered textile screen and in the 1890s the average home resembled a box excessively lined with coloured curtains, screens and linen. The functionalism of the 1920s was a rebellion against this tendency. The Mayor's House showcases the tendencies of 250 years of interior decoration.
  The silverware exhibit details the development of design and fabrication in the silver industry of the 17th century from baroque to functionalism. The collection includes works of 310 smiths from 44 different cities and towns with works of Niels Christensen as the oldest (c. 1637) and Henning Koppel, a pupil of Georg Jensen, as the most recent (1918).
caption: Museum staff members dress up in historical authentic clothing. Sometimes roleplays are acted out.
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