Dyrehavsbakken
— — the oldest working fairground in the world.
Not only on a wall.
“A wooden fairground at the edge of Dyrehaven, the royal deer park a short S-train ride north of Copenhagen. Bakken has been open since 1583, which makes it the oldest amusement park still running. Entry is free. The Rutschebanen wooden coaster has been rattling its way around the same track since 1932, and a brakeman still rides each train. Fallow deer move through the beech wood outside the gates as if the noise belonged to someone else. from the studio
Dyrehavsbakken, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Dyrehavsbakken, known to Copenhageners as Bakken, sits at the southern edge of Jægersborg Dyrehave, the former royal hunting ground designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015. It is about ten kilometres north of central Copenhagen and reached in twenty minutes on the C-line S-train to Klampenborg. The fairground traces its origin to 1583, when a natural spring drew Copenhageners north and entertainers followed. Guinness World Records lists it as the oldest operating amusement park in the world. Entry is free; tickets are bought per ride, and the season runs roughly from late March to late August.
The fairground keeps a working timetable rather than a museum one. Rutschebanen, the wooden roller coaster built in 1932, still runs with a brakeman riding in each train to control the speed on the descents. Pierrot, the white-faced clown introduced in the 1800s, still performs daily on the Pjerrot stage during the summer. Korsbæk på Bakken, a recreated period street based on the Danish television series Matador, opened in 2017. The season is short and concentrated: late March through the last weekend of August, after which the wood goes quiet again until spring.
What surrounds the fairground is, in some ways, the better story. Jægersborg Dyrehave covers about 11 square kilometres of old beech forest and open meadow, and roughly 2,000 fallow deer, red deer, and sika still graze the park as they have since 1670, when Christian V enclosed it for par force hunting. The Eremitageslottet, a small white hunting lodge from 1736, stands on the high ground inside. Visitors arriving on foot from Klampenborg station walk a few hundred metres through the wood to reach the gates.