St. Bendt’s church in Ringsted, Denmark, is Scandinavia’s oldest brick church and Denmark’s first royal church. In 1170, King Valdemar I of Denmark commissioned a church to be built as a sepulcher and shrine for his father, St. Canute.
The church originally formed the northern wing of a Benedictine monastery. The church was built as a separate structure in the Lombard style, a form of early Romanesque architecture from northern Italy.