The Marble Church, whose actual name is Frederik's Church, was originally designed in 1740 as part of Frederiksstaden near Amalienborg under Frederik V, and was intended to be even more grandiose than its current form. Struensee ordered the construction to be halted in 1770, and the church remained an excursion destination and a subject for many of the 19th century's best painters.
The church was not completed until Tietgen bought the ruin in the 1870s and had the church finished, allowing it to be consecrated in 1894.