Best known as the writer of (and Meryl Streep character in) Out of Africa, Karen Blixen grew up in a 400-year-old coaching inn at Rungsted. She returned here from Africa in 1931 bankrupt, heartbroken and suffering heavy-metal poisoning…then started to write. The house remains much as she left it, full of period furniture but also photographs, Masai spears, personal mementoes and two rooms of her remarkably impressive paintings.
The visit to the main house starts every half-hour with a 10-minute introductory talk. While waiting for that, you can look around the biographical room and library of Blixen's books that sit above the ticket desk and cafe. Once inside, there's also a 12-minute video presentation, and each of the seven rooms has a bilingual descriptive info-card. The wooded grounds behind, set aside as a bird sanctuary, contain Blixen’s grave, a simple stone slab beneath a large beech tree around 350m west of the house. You'll pass it if you take the short-cut route to the Rungsted Kyst train station (route map and directions available from the museum).