By Air

Opened on 1 April 1973, Roskilde's small airport serves light aircraft for training, taxi and flight instruction.There are existing plans to expand the airport for use by larger aircraft possibly including discount international flights.The plans are pending an environmental impact assessment.The airport currently handles up to 100,000 operations (flights) per year.

By Train

Roskilde has a four-platform railway station.Its seven tracks serve as a central hub connecting southern Zealand, the islands of Falster and Lolland, west Zealand and Jutland to Copenhagen.It is the oldest railway station in Denmark still operating and the first built of stone.The first train arrived from Copenhagen on 26 June 1847.

Roskilde Cathedral, Viking ships, Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde Festival, Roskilde Museum

Roskilde Cathedral

The city's early importance is evident from the fact that the Roskilde Cathedral was the only cathedral in Zealand until the 20th century.Built in the 12th and 13th centuries it was the first Gothic cathedral to be built of brick and its construction encouraged the spread of this style throughout northern Europe.The cathedral is the burial site for Danish monarchs and is a major tourist attraction with more than 125,000 visitors annually.Since 1995, the cathedral has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.A working church it also hosts concerts throughout the year.

Viking ships

Another attraction in the city is the Viking Ship.The centrepieces of its collection are the well-preserved remains of five Viking ships excavated from nearby Roskilde Fjord in the late 1960s.The ships were scuttled there in the 11th century to block a navigation channel thus protecting the city then the Danish capital from seaborne assault.The museum also undertakes research in experimental archaeology centered on Viking shipbuilding and seaworthiness.These five ships represents several distinct classes of Viking Ships such as the Longship and Warship and smaller fishing and ferry boats.The ships on display range from 10 feet to 50 feet.

Viking Ship Museum

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde is the Danish national museum for ships, seafaring and boatbuilding in the prehistoric and medieval period.Around the year 1070, five Viking ships were deliberately sunk at Skuldelev in Roskilde Fjord in order to block the most important fairway and to protect Roskilde from enemy attack from the sea.These ships later known as the Skuldelev ships were excavated in 1962.They turned out to be five different types of ships ranging from cargo ships to ships of war.The Viking Ship Museum overlooks Roskilde Fjord and was built in 1969 especially to exhibit the five newly-discovered ships.In the late 1990's excavations for an expansion of the museum uncovered a further nine ships including the longest Viking warship ever discovered at 36 meters.

Roskilde Festival

Roskilde Festival is a festival held south of Roskilde in Denmark and is one of the six biggest annual music festivals in Europe the other five being the Sziget Festival, the Glastonbury Festival, the Paleo Festival, Rock Werchter and Exit Festival.It was created in 1971 by two high school students Mogens Sandfaer and Jesper Switzer Moller and promoter Carl Fischer.In 1972, the festival was taken over by the Roskilde Foundation which has since run the festival as a non-profit organization for development and support of music, culture and humanism.It is Denmark's first real music-oriented festival originally for hippies but today it covers more of the mainstream youth from Scandinavia and the rest of Europe.Roskilde Festival 2007 had more than 180 performing bands and gathered around 80,000 people paying for the concerts with more than 21,000 volunteers, 5,000 media people and 3,000 artists which means almost 110,000 people participated in the festival.

Roskilde Museum

is a museum in Roskilde which in addition to house the town's local history collection also has a network of museums in the area around Roskilde.The museum's director is Frank Birkebaek.Roskilde Museum is a nationally recognized local cultural museum in Roskilde and camps municipalities.The museum's purpose is through the collection, recording, research, preservation and dissemination within its responsibility to work for the security of the country's heritage and highlight both change variety and continuity in people's living standards from the earliest times to now as these may be expressed also in the social sciences, science, art and contemporary story.The museum must make collections accessible to the public and make them available for research and disseminate the results of both the museum's own research and other research based on museum collections.

September - February

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