Copenhagen travel guide

Top 10 sights in Copenhagen

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Bruno Jargot · CC BY-SA 2.5

   Freetown Christiania

   An abandoned naval barracks occupied by squatters in 1971 and never given back, now a settlement of about a thousand people running its own affairs on land the Danish state technically owns. The open hash trade on its main lane was the long-running dispute; the community itself voted to close it down.

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2. 

   2© Janeway666 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Amalienborg

   Four identical rococo palaces of the 1750s set around an octagonal square, bought by the crown after Christiansborg burned and still the royal family's home. The guard walks up from Rosenborg each morning and is changed at noon, with the band if the queen is in residence.

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3. 

   3© Elgaard · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Tivoli Gardens

   Opened in 1843 on the argument that a people amusing itself does not think about politics, and now the third-oldest amusement park in the world. Its wooden roller coaster of 1914 still carries a brakeman in each train, and Walt Disney came here twice before building his own.

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4. 

   4© eimoberg from Changwon, South Korea · CC BY 2.0

   Christiansborg Palace

   The only building in the world housing a country's parliament, prime minister and supreme court at once. The current palace is the fourth on the site; the excavated foundations of Absalon's castle of 1167 are open in the cellar underneath it.

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5. 

   5© kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Rosenborg Castle

   A Renaissance summer house built by Christian IV between 1606 and 1624 and never modernised, so the rooms are as they were furnished. The Danish crown jewels and the regalia are in the strongroom in the basement, still used at coronations.

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6. 

   6© No machine-readable author provided. Nico-dk assumed (based on copyright claims) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   National Museum of Denmark

   Denmark's museum of cultural history, and where the Bronze Age is kept: the Sun Chariot of about 1400 BC, the Egtved girl in her oak coffin with her clothes and her drink, and the silver Gundestrup cauldron with its Celtic gods.

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7. 

   7© Jiří Komárek · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Statens Museum for Kunst

   The Danish national gallery, whose strength is the Danish Golden Age of the 1820s to 1850s — Eckersberg and his pupils, painting light on water with a plainness that took the rest of Europe another fifty years to reach.

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8. 

   8© xiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0

   Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

   Carl Jacobsen of Carlsberg spent the brewery's money on antiquities and gave the lot to the city in 1897. It holds the largest collection of Etruscan art outside Italy and a room of Roman portrait heads that is unmatched, arranged around a winter garden with a palm and a fountain.

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   9

   Grundtvig's Church

   A church built between 1921 and 1940 out of six million handmade yellow bricks and nothing else — no stone, no plaster, no ornament. Its west front rises in stepped gables like the pipes of an organ, and the interior is Gothic proportion in bare brick.

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10. 

    10© Avda · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Rundetaarn

    A tower of 1642 built by Christian IV as an observatory, and the oldest working one in Europe. Instead of stairs it has a spiral ramp two hundred metres long, wide enough for a carriage — Peter the Great is supposed to have ridden up it on horseback in 1716.

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1. 

   1© Jakub Hałun · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Frederik's Church

   A rococo church begun in 1749 whose cost bankrupted the project; it stood roofless for over a century and was finished in 1894 with cheaper stone. Its dome rests on twelve columns and can be climbed on summer afternoons.

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2. 

   2© CucombreLibre from New York, NY, USA · CC BY 2.0

   Kastellet

   A pentagonal star fort of 1662, still an active military installation and still complete — moat, bastions, barracks and a windmill on the rampart. The walk round the ramparts is a standard Copenhagen Sunday, and the Little Mermaid sits just outside them.

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3. 

   3© Erkan · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Dyrehavsbakken

   Amusement park north of Copenhagen, opened around a spring in 1583 and the oldest still operating in the world. Its wooden roller coaster dates from 1932.

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4. 

   4© Avda · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Church of Our Saviour

   A baroque church of 1695 whose spire, added in 1752, carries an external staircase of four hundred steps winding anticlockwise round the outside to a gilded globe ninety metres up. The last stretch is narrow enough that you climb it one person at a time.

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5. 

   5

   Christianshavn

   District of Copenhagen laid out from 1618 by Christian IV on reclaimed ground, with canals in the Dutch manner. Freetown Christiania has occupied a former barracks here since 1971.

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6. 

   6© Emily · CC BY 2.0

   Superkilen

   Park in Copenhagen of 2012 in a district of sixty nationalities. It gathers a hundred objects brought from residents' home countries, from Brazilian benches to Moroccan fountains.

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7. 

   7© Guillaume Baviere from Helsingborg, Sweden · CC BY 2.0

   Copenhagen Zoo

   Founded in 1859 and among the oldest zoos in Europe, on eleven hectares between two parks. Its wooden observation tower of 1905 is still climbed, and it draws about one and a third million visitors a year — more than any other attraction in Denmark outside Tivoli.

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   8

   Church of Our Lady

   Copenhagen's Lutheran cathedral, on Frue Plads beside the old main building of the university. Christian Frederik Hansen rebuilt it in austere Neoclassical form after the British bombardment of 1807, and the church was completed in 1829.

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9. 

   9© Dragør Luftfoto ( http://www.dragoerluftfoto.dk/ ) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Kongens Nytorv

   The largest square in Copenhagen, at the end of the pedestrian street Strøget. Christian V laid it out in 1670 when he extended the walled city, and his equestrian statue stands at the centre.

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10. 

    10© Jesper Hertel · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Charlottenlund Palace

    A former royal summer residence ten kilometres north of the city, named after Princess Charlotte Amalie who first built here, and enlarged in the 1880s for the crown prince. The park runs down to the sound and is open; the palace is not.

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