The Funen Village, Open-air museum in Fruens Bøge, Odense, Denmark
The Funen Village is an open-air museum with 25 buildings moved from throughout the island, spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, including farmhouses, a parsonage, a watermill, and a windmill. Each building is furnished and arranged to show how people lived and worked in those eras.
The museum started in 1942 as a public works project during German occupation and officially opened in 1946 when King Christian X attended the ceremony. After the war, it became an important place to preserve the rural past of the island.
The village keeps traditional Danish livestock breeds such as Frederiksborg horses and Landrace pigs in their natural settings, showing how animals were part of rural life. Visitors can watch these breeds moving through the grounds and grazing in pastures arranged as they would have been centuries ago.
The museum is open year-round with seasonal hours that change throughout the year. Admission is free for visitors under 18, and the grounds offer regular demonstrations of traditional crafts and skills.
The gardens feature heritage fruit trees that were once grown specifically on Funen and are now rare to find elsewhere. These old varieties of apples and pears show what farmers cultivated in the past and how they fed their families.
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