Throughout his life he maintained a loyalty to the baroque, even as the world around him continued to change and he lost work assignments to others who mastered the newer, more popular styles.

By chance he came into contact with the royal house when King Frederik IV called on the Bishop, and chose the boy and his older brother Diderich for military service.

The king was impressed, and promised to give him funds, but instead he gave Thura and his friend Lieutenant Holger Rosenkrantz additional surveying and drawing assignments.

Thura and Rosenkrantz left in 1729, and visited a number of German cities, including Kassel, where they made careful studies and measurements of buildings.

The four-wing baroque building became the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington during the English siege of Copenhagen in 1807, and now houses the Museum of Contemporary Art.

[4] In 1734–36, de Thurah built the Eremitage Palace, a palatial hunting lodge overlooking Jægersborg Dyrehave north of Copenhagen, and facing east over the Øresund to Sweden.

The grey-stone house with copper-clad mansard roof replaced another hunting lodge named "Hubertus", which had been built nearby in the 17th century.

[6] He felt that baroque was losing ground to rococo, a style mastered by another force in contemporary Danish architectural circles, Nicolai Eigtved, who would be Thura's colleague and rival throughout most of his career.

On 19 October 1740, he married Anna Rosenørn, daughter of a General Major, and was conferred nobility under the name "de Thurah".

The same year, work was completed on the tower and spire for the Church of Our Lady, in Copenhagen, partially after a drawing by Vincents Lerche.

In 1748, de Thurah was asked to assist on the building of a new spire on the Lambert van Haven designed Church of Our Saviour in the Christianshavn district of Copenhagen.

The new design however was much more costly than the king's original plan, and this led to a fierce rivalry between de Thurah and Eigtved over the choice of building material.

[8] De Thurah's masterpiece, the ornate, spiral-staircased spire on Our Saviour's Church, topped with globe and figure, was completed in 1752, and can still be seen high-above Christianshavn to this day.

The six-years-older Eigtved died that same year, causing de Thurah to be called back into service as the leading architect of the day.