C. F. Hansen, 1756-1845, is one of the most important neo-classical architects in Denmark.
His severe and simple, but very powerful style, inspired partly by ancient Roman architecture and Italian Renaissance building, found its expression already in his earliest work a row of houses for wealthy citizens in Altona near Hamburg, built in the years after C.F. Hansen's appointment as regional architect in the Duchy of Holsten in 1784.
Several of the most striking and monumental buildings in Copenhagen are likewise the work of C.F. Hansen, who at the beginning of the 19th century was called to Copenhagen to take part in the huge work of reconstruction after the great fire of 1795 and the British bombardment of the city in 1807. Thus both the Town Hall and Law Courts in Nytorv (1805-15) and Copenhagen Cathedral, Vor Frue Kirke (1811-29), were designed by C.F. Hansen.
He was moreover also entrusted with the rebuilding of the partially burned- down royal palace of Christansborg (1803-33), where he skilfully and by simple means transformed the smoke-blackened Baroque ruin into a grandiose, neo-classical palace complex. The palace burned down again in 1884, but the domed palace church belonging to it (1829) still stands.