This tour begins at the Tourist Information Office and crosses the Town Hall Square
with Copenhagen's Town Hall Building, Dragon Fountain and statue of Hans Christian
Andersen. After a brief introduction into Copenhagen and Denmark, we stop at the
beginning of the Walking Street (called Stroget) to admire the magnificent Town
Hall Tower and the Lur-Blasers column whose musical warriors remind us of the
colorful Viking period and where we will hear something about their heroic exploits
and explorations. Turning down a quiet backstreet, we arrive at the Old Prison
of Copenhagen and the 'Bridge of Sighs' which connects it to the Old Courthouse
and previous Town Hall of Copenhagen. These are two of the finest examples of
the 19th-century, Greek- and Roman-inspired neo-classic architecture which typified
the Copenhagen rebuilt after a city-fire and the bombardment of the Napoleonic
War. In front of the Old Court House was a market square where today we find a
monument to the city's whipping-post. Today a large bank building marks the place
where the childhood home of the 19th-century existentialist philosopher, Soren
Kierkegaard used to stand. After hearing something about Kierkegaard and the
Golden Age of Danish Culture we wander down a 15th-century backstreet with half-timbered
houses to where the Old Fish Market once stood, today a weekend antique market
in the summer months where we will stop to admire Thorvaldsen's Museum just opposite
us on the other side of the canal which surrounds the Castle Island. We will meet
the last of the fishwives still selling fish by a bridge going over the canal,
and from where we can see a statue to Bishop Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen,
as well as the Queen's Private Chapel and the Christiansborg Parliament building.
In the canal is an underwater sculpture-grouping based on the folktale of Agnete
and the Merman.
With a brief stop in the market-square of Amagertorv (where the cleanest and most
historic restrooms in the city are found) we will follow the Walking Street to
the King's New Square (called 'Kongens Nytorv') with the Opera House and Charlottenborg
Palace. Nearby is the colorful harbor-area of Nyhavn whose merchant’s homes and
half-timbered warehouses remind us of the salty old seaport and trading city that
was Copenhagen.
As we near the French-inspired, 18th-century rococo palaces of Amalienborg, the
Royal Family's winter residences, we will learn something about Queen Margrethe II and the Royal Family
as well as about the Royal Guard in their bearskin hats and colorful uniforms
who stand guard outside the palaces and whose job it is to protect The Queen.
The tour then passes the Russian Church with its characteristic golden cupolas
to conclude by the Marble Church with its majestic neo-classic facade above which
rises one of the largest domes in Northern Europe. Outside the church is a stature
to N.F.S. Gruntvig, the 19th-century Lutheran minister, poet, historian, economist,
politician and educator who among other things founded Denmark's Folk High School.