Copenhagen feels noticeably busier than Stockholm. The streets seem fuller, the pavements more crowded and the soundtrack considerably more international. We set off this morning to explore properly on foot. The city is compact enough that walking seems the best way to understand it, although by the end of the day our feet may have had a different opinion.
Our first proper stop was Rosenborg Castle, sitting rather beautifully in the King’s Garden. Built in the early seventeenth century by Christian IV, it began life as a country summer house outside the old city walls, although “summer house” rather undersells a building with towers, turrets, royal apartments and, these days, the Danish Crown Jewels. Christian IV was one of those monarchs who seems to have left his initials on half of Copenhagen, and Rosenborg was apparently a particular favourite of his.
From there we walked on to the Round Tower, another Christian IV creation. Built in the 1640s as an astronomical observatory, its most memorable feature is the broad spiral ramp that winds almost all the way to the top rather than a conventional staircase. The story goes that Peter the Great rode a horse up it when he visited Copenhagen in 1716, while his wife apparently followed in a carriage. We confined ourselves to walking. At the top there are excellent views across Copenhagen’s rooftops, which also demonstrate just how remarkably flat the city is. In the distance we could see the bridge to Sweden.
And then, frankly, sightseeing stopped because lunch had been booked.
We had been looking forward to Schønnemann, a Copenhagen institution which has been serving traditional Danish food since 1877. It specialises in smørrebrød, the famous Danish open sandwiches which sound simple until you encounter what the Danes actually do with them.
We started by sharing a trio of herring: pepper herring, herring with plums in Madeira, and traditional pickled herring. This was followed by more substantial open sandwiches, including eel — definitely eel, not ham — and the whole thing was excellent. Schønnemann is the sort of place where lunch is plainly intended to be an event rather than something squeezed inconveniently between tourist attractions, and we entered fully into the spirit of that philosophy.
We also had the Americans at the next table. They were not, it has to be said, a quiet group. By the time we left, we had acquired a surprisingly comprehensive knowledge of their lives, families and opinions without actually having been introduced to any of them.
Our optimistic morning sightseeing programme had therefore resulted in precisely two completed attractions before lunch. We decided not to worry about it. We are on holiday, after all, not on a school tour.
Afterwards we headed towards Nyhavn, the ridiculously photogenic stretch of waterfront whose brightly coloured houses have become one of the defining images of Copenhagen. It was created in the seventeenth century as a working harbour bringing ships right into the heart of the city and for centuries was the territory of sailors, pubs, boarding houses and rather less respectable establishments. Hans Christian Andersen lived at three different addresses along the canal. Today the sailors have largely been replaced by tourists, restaurant tables and cameras, but with the old wooden boats lining the water it remains extremely attractive.
From Nyhavn we wandered on to Amalienborg, home of the Danish royal family. Four almost identical eighteenth-century palaces surround the great octagonal square, with Frederik V sitting on horseback in the middle. One of them, Frederik VIII’s Palace, is now the Copenhagen home of King Frederik X, Queen Mary and their family.
There is a wonderfully theatrical piece of town planning here. Standing in the square, the huge green dome of Frederik’s Church — better known as the Marble Church — dominates one end of the vista, while in the opposite direction the axis continues through Amaliehaven and across the harbour towards Copenhagen’s modern Opera House. Or at least that is the theory. At the moment the grand eighteenth-century vision has to compete with roadworks, scaffolding and cherry pickers, which rather spoil the effect. You have to use your imagination.
We went into the church, and it was well worth doing. The great dome is enormous — the largest church dome in Scandinavia — and gives the circular interior a wonderful sense of space. Around it are twelve panels representing the Apostles, with the Beatitudes beneath.
The church also has one of those wonderfully improbable building histories. Frederik V laid its foundation stone in 1749, but costs got out of hand and construction was abandoned in 1770. For more than a century Copenhagen was therefore left with an unfinished monumental church in the middle of its grand new royal district. The financier C. F. Tietgen eventually stepped in, work resumed under architect Ferdinand Meldahl, and the church was finally consecrated in 1894 — a mere 145 years after it had been started. It makes most delayed building projects look positively brisk.
We wandered back through the King’s Garden, where the royal tranquillity had been comprehensively invaded by large groups of young people. It turned out that we had stumbled across university freshers doing their introductory activities. There were groups everywhere, surrounded by bags, boxes and the debris of organised games. Apparently Copenhagen Business School was among those using the park for its student induction activities today. Rosenborg provided a rather magnificent backdrop to the altogether more contemporary business of making new friends and beginning university life. And many, many cans of beer. Carlsberg, of course.
Our route back towards the hotel then took us past Torvehallerne, Copenhagen’s excellent food market. Even after our substantial lunch it was difficult not to be tempted by stalls piled high with vegetables, fruit, bread, cheese and all manner of things we didn’t actually need but immediately wanted. One stall in particular was a glorious heap of carrots, cabbages, leeks, tomatoes and strawberries — food presented with the same effortless good looks that the Scandinavians seem to apply to almost everything.
A little further on we passed the Egmont building on Vognmagergade, impossible to miss because of the glass bridge spanning the street with an enormous blue-and-gold clock hanging in it. Egmont is a Danish media company whose origins go back to 1878, although the striking bridge feels considerably more contemporary.
And so back to the hotel, having covered considerably less of Copenhagen than our original plan suggested but having enjoyed it rather more for not trying.
After several days in Sweden, Copenhagen certainly feels like a change of gear. Stockholm is a capital city, of course, but somehow it rarely felt overwhelmingly busy. Copenhagen does. There are bicycles everywhere, packed pavements, busy cafés and restaurants, tour groups and that constant mixture of languages — with American and Australian accents particularly prominent today.
But beneath all that activity there is a wonderfully coherent city: seventeenth-century castles, eighteenth-century royal squares, nineteenth-century institutions, colourful harbour houses and modern Danish design, all sitting within a remarkably walkable area.
Sometimes the best way to see a city is to accept that you are not going to see everything. Two sights before lunch, a very long lunch and a leisurely wander afterwards turned out to be quite enough.
For now, anyway. The day wasn’t over yet.
After a rest at the hotel, we headed out again in the evening, this time for Tivoli. We walked there through another part of Copenhagen, past the lakes in the lovely evening light and on towards the centre. By the time we reached the City Hall, the low sun was catching the red brick beautifully, and the strange green dragons guarding the building looked as though they had escaped from somewhere rather more fantastical. Which, given where we were going next, seemed appropriate.
Tivoli is one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, opening in 1843, and it sits right in the middle of Copenhagen opposite the City Hall. Somehow it manages to be both a historic garden and a proper amusement park, with trees, flowers, lakes and rather elegant old buildings sitting alongside rollercoasters, flashing lights and people screaming overhead.
Naturally, as two older men rapidly approaching pension age, we behaved with appropriate dignity and spent the evening strolling sedately through the gardens admiring the horticulture.
Obviously not.
We are, in fact, really big teenagers, so we bought ride passes and went on loads of things.
There was Den Flyvende Kuffert — The Flying Trunk — a wonderfully old-fashioned journey through scenes from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. There was something rather charming about being carried past princesses, mattresses and assorted characters from stories we have known since childhood.
And then there was Dæmonen.
Dæmonen is a rather less gentle proposition: a rollercoaster with inversions, loops and all the other things which sensible men of our age might reasonably decide they no longer need in their lives. We decided otherwise. The photograph taken on the ride captures the situation rather well. Around us, hair is flying, mouths are open and people are screaming. Mark and I appear to be having an absolutely splendid time.
We went on plenty more besides. One of the pleasures of Tivoli is that it doesn’t really matter whether you are six, sixteen or sixty-something. Once you have a wristband and there is another ride just over there, normal considerations of age and dignity become surprisingly easy to abandon.
By the time we emerged, Copenhagen had moved into evening and our rather substantial Danish lunch was finally beginning to feel like a distant memory. After a day that had included a royal castle, an observatory, three sorts of herring, a royal palace, an enormous church, university freshers, a food market and enough fairground rides to rearrange several internal organs, dinner required very little ceremony.
So, naturally, we finished the evening with burgers at Max. Perhaps not the most obviously Danish culinary conclusion to the day, although Max is at least Scandinavian.
And that seems an appropriately unserious ending to a very good Copenhagen day. We may be two older men edging ever closer to pension age, but tonight at Tivoli we were about seventeen.
Possibly twelve.
