The church was designed by the architect
Nicolai Eigtved in 1740 and was, along with the rest of
Frederiksstaden, a district of Copenhagen, intended to commemorate the 300-year jubilee of the first
coronation of a member of the
House of Oldenburg. Frederick's Church has the largest church
dome in
Scandinavia with a span of . Eigtved finished the drawings of the church around 1740, but his original design was much more pompous; the dome should have been significantly taller and rest on the exterior walls with a diameter of . The dome rests on twelve columns. The foundation stone was set by King
Frederick V on 31 October 1749, but the construction was slowed by budget cuts and the death of Eigtved in 1754. A French architect,
Nicolas-Henri Jardin, continued the construction from 1756 after revising the design and changing it to a more classical, marble church. In 1874,
Andreas Frederik Krieger, Denmark's Finance Minister at the time, sold the ruins of the uncompleted church and the church square to
Carl Frederik Tietgen for 100,000
rigsdaler — none of which was to be paid in cash — on the condition that Tietgen would build a church in a style similar to the original plans and donate it to the state when complete, while in turn he acquired the rights to subdivide neighboring plots for development. Tietgen not only wanted the church to represent a folklore to The Royal House, but also as a great monument for the grundtvigianismen, created by Danish pastor and philosopher,
N. F. S. Grundtvig. At the front entrance, a statue of Grundtvig was raised and the exterior walls around the church are also decorated with statues of important people from the Danish and international church history. Frederik's church is a parish church, also known to be an Evangelical–Lutheran church, which is the national or most common church in Denmark. It also became a place for concerts, monument of the constitution, and a display of sculptor
Thorvaldsen's works of art. Many people in Denmark call it the Marble Church instead of Frederik's Church due to its prominent feature of the marble dome. Today, Frederik's church stands as vast architectural monument in Frederiksstaden as a tribute to the roman baroque and Danish philosopher Grundtvig. ==Architecture and notable features==