Historien i hovedet, monumentet på kroppen - overvejelser om identifikation og autenticitet

History imagined and history as monuments and space - some reflections The paper discusses the difference in experiencing past realities indirectly and directly. Either these realiries are represented verbally and visually to be read, viewed - and imagined. Or they are directly available to all senses in the physical surroundings, as remaining monuments and buildings. Partly available they are exhibited in museums as material objects. It is further argued that there is a fundamental difference between the multisensory experience of entering the genuine historical space of a church or walking the streets of an old well-preserved town or village and studying the representations offered in museums where the objects are combined with texts and supporting visuals. The author points to the significant role monuments from the past have played through history in stimulating and shaping aesthetic taste and architectural ideas, from the Renaissance and the Baroque to the historicism of the 19th century. Monuments have served both as a counterpoint to modernity and as a Well of Time through which we perceive bygone realities.