Nimb Hotel — Copenhagen
A white Moorish fantasy building at the heart of Tivoli Gardens — the 1843 amusement park that inspired Walt Disney — converted in 2008 into Copenhagen’s most intimate luxury hotel.
At a glance
The Nimb building was constructed in 1909 as the principal restaurant and event space within Tivoli Gardens — the historic pleasure garden established in 1843 by Georg Carstensen on the edge of Copenhagen’s medieval city. The Orientalist Moorish design, with its white render, horseshoe arches, and crenellated roofline, was intended to evoke the exotic atmosphere that Tivoli’s original designers had cultivated since the 1840s, when the garden was deliberately designed as a fantasy Eastern landscape to contrast with the grey north European city around it. The Nimb building has been the focal point of Tivoli’s central lake since 1909.
Key facts
- Built: 1909 as Tivoli restaurant; hotel conversion 2008
- Style: Orientalist Moorish — horseshoe arches, white render, crenellated roofline
- Address: Bernstorffsgade 5, 1577 Copenhagen, Denmark
- GPS: 55.6738, 12.5696
- Status: Five-star boutique hotel within Tivoli Gardens; 17 rooms
- Tivoli connection: Within the grounds of Tivoli Gardens (1843), one of the world's oldest amusement parks, which inspired Walt Disney
History
Tivoli Gardens opened on 15 August 1843, immediately west of Copenhagen’s medieval city walls. Georg Carstensen had persuaded King Christian VIII to grant him a 5-year licence on the grounds that “when the people are amusing themselves they do not think about politics.” The design mixed Chinese pavilions, Moorish arches, and French Second Empire kiosks in a deliberately exotic collage that proved enormously influential: Hans Christian Andersen was a regular visitor, and Walt Disney visited Tivoli in 1951 before beginning work on Disneyland.
The 1909 Nimb building was added as the permanent centrepiece restaurant to replace earlier temporary structures. The Danish architect Knud Arne Petersen designed it in the Moorish idiom to complement the Chinese-Moorish decorative tradition that Tivoli had maintained since 1843. The building housed Tivoli’s principal banquet hall and restaurant for 99 years before being converted into a luxury hotel in 2008 — at only 17 rooms, the most intimate five-star property in Denmark.
What you see
The white-rendered Moorish composition is most dramatic at night, when Tivoli’s famous illuminations — over 100,000 coloured bulbs — reflect in the central lake in front of the building. The horseshoe arches of the ground-floor arcade, the crenellated parapet, and the twin domed towers are all drawn from a broadly North African Moorish vocabulary, interpreted by a Danish architect working within the Tivoli tradition of exotic historicism. The hotel conversion inserted 17 rooms within the historic shell without altering the exterior.
Practical information
Hotel guests have private access to Tivoli Gardens throughout its season (April–September, Christmas, Halloween). The gardens close at midnight; summer concerts and fireworks are included. Copenhagen Central Station is directly adjacent. The hotel’s Nimb Brasserie is open for non-guests and is one of the most popular restaurants in the city.
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