In all it took approximately two hundred years to complete the cathedral, which was finally dedicated on 30 April 1499. The church was built in cruciform shape without a tower. The ancient crypt was expanded in such a way that pilgrims could visit the reliquary of Saint Canute beneath the raised choir without interfering with the canons' hourly services above. The canons also claimed they had relics of Saint Alban which Canute supposedly stole on his 1075 attack on Ely, England.
King Hans of Denmark (d. 1513) was buried in the cathedral in 1513. His wife, Christina of Saxony, who lived the latter part of her life in a nunnery in Odense, commissioned the famous German sculptor Claus Berg to create a magnificent burial chapel in the church of the Franciscan friary in Odense, where both she and her husband were laid to rest after her death in 1521. The son of Hans and Christina, King Christian II, with his wife Isabella of Austria, was also interred in the royal family chapel. In 1807 the former Franciscan church was demolished, and Claus Berg's magnificent late Gothic altarpiece and the bodies of the four royals were transferred to St. Canute's Cathedral. The altarpiece is truly one of Denmark's national treasures. It was carved between 1515 and 1525. Each of the three sections is intricately carved and gilded. It survived the iconoclastic fervour of the Reformation perhaps because of its connection with the royal burials.