The story of Roskilde Cathedral

This cathedral has been the main burial site of Denmark's monarchs since the 15th century, and chapel after chapel was added over the centuries to hold their tombs. Its roots go back to Harald Bluetooth, who made Roskilde his capital around the year 960 and built a royal farm here with a small stave church beside it. When he died, he was buried in the church he had built.

The building you see went up in the 12th and 13th centuries, mixing Romanesque and Gothic features, and it is one of the earliest Gothic cathedrals in Scandinavia built in brick, a style it helped spread across Northern Europe. Its walls show 800 years of European architecture. There is a legend, too: when two canons brought the skull of St Lucius home from Rome, a demon attacked their ship, and one canon washed the skull three times, jumped overboard and walked on the water.

Since 1995 the cathedral has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.