What shaped Copenhagen? This tour will try to explain the forces shaping the city without boring you to tears with endless lists of kings named Christian or Frederik. Specific details gives you the big picture. Compare with your own city and see Copenhagen in a new light. This is really Copenhagen from a nerd’s view.
The tour begins and ends at Frue Plads (Square of Our Lady), 12.57201, 55.6792, in front of the university’s stairs.
The start: The staircase of the main administration building of the university of Copenhagen on Frue Plads. Photo: Nina Søndergaard
In an hour and some ten stops will bring you the background of Copenhagen: The sea, the fires, the wars, the ramparts, the slum and then some.
No specialist knowledge of Copenhagen or Denmark is required, but you may have been on a canal tour and wondered about what you saw. Or you just moved to Denmark (welcome!) and are trying to get a grip on the city.
As the tour looks at the bigger picture and structures young children will be bored to tears, so minimum age is probably 14 years.
My background and reasons for making this tour: I’m a historian but studied architecture and read economics and sociology. I love fun facts and being able to get a broader view from a small detail – like surpassing all the individual and interesting kings and seeing them for what they all were: Dictators. This view also connects Copenhagen with other cities both then and now, as Copenhagen was much like crowded cities in the third world today. This makes room for a slight optimism: Today the most liveable city in the world, then worse off in some respects than a lot of slum today.
The video shown at the bottom of the homepage will give you an idea of the tour.
Price: 20€ or $25 pr. person.
