Carlsberg delivers The Beer

Ravelinen is just the place to enjoy an ice cold beer - especially outdoors on a hot summer’s day. The beer comes from the world famous Carlsberg Brewery which many of us got to know better when the impressive drama series ’The Brewer" was shown on television recently. Beer production started in Brolæggerstrade, where hvidtøl (a kind of pale, light beer) was the in thing. The man behind the name Carlsberg was the brewer J.C. Jacobsen who moved the brewery to Valby Hill and called it after his son Carl. Production started there in 1847. The Brewery was later renamed Old Carlsberg because the son started up his own New Carlsberg Brewery. Today, the old factory from the 1840’s has become an historic industrial museum.

Both J.C. and his son Carl were very interested in art and culture which their large industrial plant with the "Elephant Gate" on Valby Hill bears withness to. Carl Jacobsen founded the country’s first Glyptotek, a statue museum, which is run as the Carlsberg Museum today. Carl also founded and presented the city of Copenhagen with what we know today as the wonderful New Carlsberg Glyptotek. The Glyptotek is quite a unique museum, it is a neighbour to Tivoli and can be entered from H.C. Andersens Boulevard. Moreover, Carlsberg has given the City a countless number of monuments and buildings. To name just a few of them - the greenhouses at the Botanical Gardens, the tower on Nikolaj Church, the Royal Danish Society of Sciences and Letters’ building which is located opposite the New Carlsberg Glyptotek building and, by no means least, the Little Mermaid statue at Langelinie, which dates back to 1913. The Little Mermaid has become our national symbol. You can’t visit Copenhagen without visiting her or being photographed next to her - just like you can’t visit New York without going to see the Statue of Liberty. The restauration of Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød is also a gift from Carlsberg - a true patron of the arts both past and present. One of the chief architects behind Carlsberg’s busy construction business was Vilhelm Dahlerup who we also know from the Royal Theatre, the Pantomime Theatre and the Søpavillion. Peter Olesen, Journalist and Author