The Technical University of Denmark (Danish: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a university just north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and is today ranked among Europe's leading engineering institutions, and the best engineering university in Scandinavia. The student union at DTU is the 161-year old Polyteknisk Forening. DTU was founded in 1829 as the 'College of Advanced Technology' (Danish: Den Polytekniske Læreanstalt) with the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, then a professor at the University of Copenhagen, as one of the driving forces. The inspiration was the École Polytechnique in Paris which Ørsted had visited as a young scientist. The new institution was inaugurated on 5 November 1829 with Ørsted as its principal, a position he held until his death in 1851. The new college's first home was two buildings in Studiestræde and St- Oederstræde in central Copenhagen but although expanded several times they remained inadequate and in 1890 a new building complex was inaugurated in Sølvgade in 1890.