Copenhagen: Nyhavn to Christiania

And for two centuries, this was a rough, hard-drinking district. Sailors, dockworkers, and merchants crowded into cheap taverns, smoke-filled bars, and brothels. The canal smelled of tar, salt water, and fish. Fights were common. This was not a place you brought respectable company.

One famous resident loved it anyway. Hans Christian Andersen lived in Nyhavn at three separate addresses over the course of his life. He first settled at number twenty in eighteen thirty-four. He later moved to number sixty-seven, where he lived for seventeen years. His final address on the canal was number eighteen, the mustard-coloured house near the harbour end, where he stayed until eighteen seventy-five, the year he died. The man who wrote The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and Thumbelina looked out at this canal every morning for much of his adult life.

Today the canal is all outdoor restaurants and tourist boats. The working ships are long gone, replaced by a small fleet of old wooden sailing vessels moored along the quay. They belong to a maritime association and are lovely to look at, especially with their rigging reflected in the still water on a calm morning.

Look for the anchor monument at the harbour entrance. It was erected in nineteen seventy-one as a memorial to Danish sailors who died in both World Wars. More than twelve hundred Danish merchant seamen lost their lives during the Second World War alone.

When you are ready, walk to the far end of Nyhavn, away from the harbour, toward the large open square. That is Kongens Nytorv, and our next stop.

The dominant building on the west side of the square, with the Dutch Baroque facade and the decorative gables, is Charlottenborg Palace. It was built between sixteen seventy-two and sixteen seventy-three as the private mansion of Ulrik Frederik Gyldenloeve, who was the illegitimate son of King Frederik the Third. After Christian the Fifth died, his widow Queen Charlotte Amalie purchased the palace and gave it her name. Since seventeen fifty-four, the building has housed the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Students still paint and sculpt inside those rooms today, and the gallery facing the canal, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, hosts some of the most interesting contemporary art exhibitions in the city.

Look to the south side of the square. The grand building with the mansard roof is Thott's Palace, now the French Embassy. The king's intention was that only the finest buildings in Copenhagen could line this square, and for the most part, his successors honoured that decree.

Kongens Nytorv is also the main station for the Copenhagen Metro, and directly below your feet, two metro lines cross. The city is three and a half metres above sea level at this point, which made tunnelling here a significant engineering challenge when the metro was built in the nineteen-nineties.

From here we head northeast toward the waterfront and the royal quarter. Walk toward the harbour, along the wide boulevard Amaliegade, for about five hundred metres. You will see the four identical yellow-ochre palaces arranged around a circular courtyard long before you reach them. That is Amalienborg, home of the Danish royal family.

Each palace still belongs to a different branch or member of the royal family. The royal family remains one of the most approachable monarchies in the world by European standards. The royals cycle through the city like ordinary citizens, and on Queen Margrethe's birthday, January sixteenth, thousands of Danes gather in this courtyard to sing and wave flags.

Look for the guards. The Royal Life Guards have maintained a changing of the guard ceremony here since eighteen forty-eight. The ceremony takes place every day, and on days when a member of the royal family is in residence, the guards wear their tall black bearskin hats. On other days, they wear standard military caps.

The harbour side of the district, just behind the palaces, opens onto the Amalienborg waterfront and Amaliehaven, a formal garden donated to the city in nineteen eighty-three by the Maersk shipping company. From the garden, on a clear day, you can see across the harbour to the island of Amager and the landmark of the opera house, which opened in two thousand and five and was also paid for by Maersk.

From here, follow the waterfront path north for about seven hundred metres to the famous statue that sits on a rock at the water's edge. You cannot miss it.

The statue was unveiled on August twenty-third, nineteen thirteen. It has been vandalised more times than the authorities care to count. Her head was sawn off in nineteen sixty-four and again in nineteen ninety-eight. Her arm was removed in nineteen eighty-four. She has been painted red, she has been dressed in a burqa, and in two thousand and three she was briefly blown off her rock by an explosion. Each time, she was restored and returned to her place.

The story The Little Mermaid was published by Hans Christian Andersen in eighteen thirty-seven. It ends very differently from the Disney version. Andersen's mermaid does not get the prince. She dissolves into sea foam. Andersen was reportedly inspired by his own unrequited feelings for a man he loved who married someone else.

Look across the harbour from here. On the other side, you can see the Hermitage Hunting Lodge and the low hills of northern Zealand. The water you are looking at is the Oresund, the strait between Denmark and Sweden. On a clear day, you can just make out the Oresund Bridge, the six-teen-kilometre crossing that has linked Copenhagen to Malmo since the year two thousand.

Just behind the statue is the Kastellet, the star-shaped fortress we visit next. Walk back along the waterfront path and through the fortress gates.

The fortress was built to protect Copenhagen from attack by sea, and it has witnessed some of the most significant moments in Danish military history. In seventeen hundred, the Swedish army appeared outside the city walls with a force large enough to threaten the entire country. Copenhagen was saved only by the rapid intervention of English and Dutch fleets arriving in the harbour. In seventeen eighty-seven, the English writer Mary Wollstonecraft visited Copenhagen and wrote about the fortress in her letters. She was not impressed by the city but admired the fortifications.

The most notorious event connected to Kastellet came in eighteen forty-eight, when the astronomer and naval officer P.W. Lund was imprisoned here. But the fortress's most famous prisoner by historical reputation was Leonora Christina, daughter of King Christian the Fourth, who was held in the Blue Tower of Copenhagen Castle from sixteen sixty-three to sixteen eighty-five for alleged involvement in treason. The Blue Tower was a separate facility, but the Kastellet's cells have held their share of prisoners over the centuries.

Today the Kastellet is still an active military installation. The Danish Defence Command has offices here, and Danish military personnel work and train within these walls. It is unusual to walk through a functioning military base that is also a public park, but that is exactly what this is. Danish citizens and tourists walk the ramparts and picnic on the grass while soldiers go about their duties a few metres away.

The windmill on the north rampart dates from eighteen forty-seven. It was built to mill grain for the garrison and still stands as one of the symbols of the fortress. From the top of the ramparts, you get a clear view east toward the harbour and the Oresund. Walk the full circuit of the ramparts if you have time. It takes about fifteen minutes and the views are superb. When you are ready, exit through the south gate and walk southwest through the Churchillparken toward the great green copper domes of St Alban's Church and beyond it, toward the city.

Christian died in sixteen forty-eight. In his final days, he insisted on being brought here to Rosenborg, and he died in the chamber now called the Winter Room on the ground floor. He had ruled Denmark for sixty years.

The castle became a museum in eighteen thirty-three and today it houses the Danish Royal Collection and the Crown Jewels. If you step inside, go straight to the basement treasury. Behind thick glass you will find the crown jewels: the coronation crown of the Danish kings, encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, and alongside it the Queen's crown and the regalia of the Order of the Elephant, Denmark's highest order of chivalry established in fourteen sixty-two. The throne in the Great Hall upstairs is made from Norwegian narwhal tusks, and it is flanked by three life-size silver lions. In the seventeenth century, narwhal tusks were valued as highly as gold because they were believed to come from unicorns and to have magical protective properties.

The Kings Garden surrounding the castle, Kongens Have, is the oldest surviving royal garden in Denmark. It was laid out in the early sixteen hundreds, redesigned in a more formal French style in the late seventeen hundreds, and has been open to the public since seventeen seventy. On a warm day it is packed with Copenhageners lying on the lawns, running with dogs, and eating lunch under the old chestnuts and linden trees. The roses along the south wall are spectacular in June and July.

From Rosenborg, we head southwest toward the old city. Walk out through the south gate of the Kings Garden and continue along Gothersgade and then south on any of the small streets heading toward the pedestrian zone. In about fifteen minutes of walking, you will arrive at Stroget and the Latin Quarter.

Look for the round brick tower rising above the rooftops to the north. That is the Rundetaarn, the Round Tower, built between sixteen thirty-seven and sixteen forty-two by Christian the Fourth as an astronomical observatory. It has no internal staircase. Instead, a wide cobblestone spiral ramp winds seven and a half times around the hollow core of the tower, designed so that astronomers could haul heavy telescopes to the observation platform at the top. The ramp is wide enough for a horse-drawn cart, and in seventeen sixteen, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia rode his horse all the way to the top during a royal visit to Copenhagen.

The street you are standing on connects two worlds: the commercial buzz of Stroget to the south and the quieter, more residential lanes of the Latin Quarter to the north. Fiolstraede, just to your north, is lined with second-hand bookshops and the red-brick buildings of the university faculty.

From here, follow the pedestrian zone westward and then turn south. In about ten minutes of walking, crossing the canal bridges over the inner harbour channels, you will arrive at the island of Slotsholmen and the great towers of Christiansborg Palace.

Walk under the riding arch and into the interior courtyard. The equestrian statue at the centre shows King Christian the Ninth. The royal stables to the south, the Riding Hall to the west, and the theatre to the north all survive from earlier palace complexes and are still in use today.

If you have time, the highlight of the interior is the Great Hall, a vast reception room decorated with seventeen tapestries designed by the artist Bjorn Noergaard. The tapestries were commissioned in nineteen ninety and took fifteen years to complete. They depict the history of Denmark from the Viking Age to the present day and are considered one of the finest examples of Danish applied art from the twentieth century. The hall is used for state banquets and official receptions.

Below the palace, the ruins of Bishop Absalon's original castle from eleven sixty-seven are preserved in the basement and open to visitors. You can walk through the foundations of the medieval fortifications and see the successive layers of construction that have stood on this island for eight and a half centuries.

From Christiansborg, cross back over the canal and walk west and south for about five hundred metres. You will pass the old market hall and arrive at the ornate Moorish entrance gates of Tivoli Gardens.

On opening day, Carstensen had created something entirely new. He built a pleasure garden on the old city fortifications, mixing Chinese-inspired pavilions, Moorish archways, flower gardens, live theatre, and outdoor concerts with mechanical rides and fireworks displays. It was part carnival, part botanical garden, part concert hall. Thousands of Copenhageners came through the gates on that first day alone.

The wooden roller coaster, Rutschebanen, was built in nineteen fourteen and is still operating today. It is one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in continuous operation in the world. A human operator rides in the last car and controls the brakes manually. No computers. Just one person, a brake lever, and decades of experience.

In nineteen forty-four, during the German occupation of Denmark, resistance fighters set fire to several buildings in Tivoli in protest. The park was significantly damaged. After the liberation, it was rebuilt and reopened.

The connection to Walt Disney is well documented. Disney visited Tivoli in nineteen fifty-one with his wife Lillian and took extensive notes on the park's design, landscaping, and atmosphere. Four years later he opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The use of themed zones, careful landscaping, water features, and elaborate evening lighting can all be traced in part to the influence of this park.

Hans Christian Andersen, who lived just a few streets away on this tour's starting point at Nyhavn, was a regular visitor to Tivoli in its early years. From here, our final stop is about one kilometre to the east, across the inner harbour to Christianshavn. Head back toward the canal bridges, cross over to the island, and follow Prinsessegade south and then east toward the old commune.

The Danish government tried repeatedly to shut Christiania down in the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties. A series of legal compromises kept the community alive, and in two thousand and eleven, the residents collectively purchased the land from the state for a negotiated price, finally securing their tenure after forty years of uncertainty.

Today Christiania is home to roughly nine hundred people living in self-built homes scattered across thirty-four hectares of old fortification land, lake edges, and canal banks. The architecture ranges from crude shacks to genuinely beautiful hand-crafted wooden houses. Many of the residents are artists, craftspeople, musicians, and tradespeople. There is a music venue, a climbing wall, several cafes and restaurants, a bike workshop, and a bakery.

The main street running through the heart of the community is Pusher Street. Cannabis was openly sold here for decades under an unofficial tolerance arrangement with the Danish authorities. Periodic police operations have disrupted that trade at various points, and the legal status of cannabis in Denmark remains unchanged: it is illegal. Be aware of this as you walk through.

What is most striking about Christiania is not the politics or the controversy but the greenery. The old rampart lakes, the willows hanging over the water, the vegetable gardens and the old moat channels make this one of the most quietly beautiful corners of Copenhagen. Sit by the water if you can find a bench. Watch the ducks. Listen to someone playing guitar from inside one of the timber houses.

This is where the walk ends: at the edge of a city within a city, where Copenhagen becomes something harder to define and more interesting for it. Thank you for walking with me.