Copenhagen Audio Tour: Historic Hearts

On your right is Rosenborg Castle. Look at those soaring towers and the red brickwork accented with sandstone. This is a masterclass in Dutch Renaissance architecture, a style known for its ornate gables and striking symmetry, which became the standard for Danish buildings of the era. King Christian the Fourth started this project in sixteen oh six. He originally envisioned a modest little hermitage, a quiet getaway. But, as kings tend to do, he got carried away. Over the next twenty-eight years, the building went through four massive expansions until it reached the form you see before you.

If you pull up the before and after image on your app, you will notice that while the gardens have evolved, that distinct architectural profile has remained remarkably untouched over the last century.

Christian the Fourth adored this place. In fact, his attachment was a bit extreme. When he lay dying at another palace, he actually ordered his staff to drag him onto a horse-drawn sled and haul him back to Rosenborg, just so he could end his days in his favorite building.

By seventeen ten, his great-grandson, Frederik the Fourth, decided the castle was outdated. Instead of living here, he repurposed it as a giant storage unit for his royal collections. Because of that practical decision, Rosenborg features some of the most perfectly preserved historical interiors in Europe. Take a glance at your screen to see the stunning crown of King Christian the Fourth, one of the priceless jewels protected inside.

If you want to view the regalia yourself, the museum is open every day from ten A-M to five P-M. Take your time admiring the masonry, and whenever you are ready, we can head to our next stop.

Look to your right for a massive yellow brick building topped with a steep red tile roof and endless rows of crisp white windows. This is the Royal Life Guard Barracks, though its origins are surprisingly botanical. King Christian the Fifth built a garden pavilion here in sixteen seventy. King Frederik the Fourth later expanded it into an orangery, a heated greenhouse for exotic citrus trees, in seventeen zero nine. In seventeen eighty-six, the military took over, trading delicate lemon trees for armed soldiers.

The most intense chapter here unfolded during World War Two. On the twenty-ninth of August, nineteen forty-three, German forces attacked the barracks at four in the morning. The Danish guards refused to fold. Two hundred men fiercely returned fire from the drill square and directly out of these windows. The shootout only stopped when the Life Guard commander arrived to order a ceasefire, ending a battle that left two Danish soldiers dead. Today, the building holds a military museum, though you must politely ask the armed guard at the gate for entry.

It remains a formidable piece of Danish history. Whenever you are ready, we can continue to our next stop.

Look to your right to spot the expansive green lawns bounded by low brick walls, creating a vast approach to a striking red brick palace crowned with tall green copper spires.

Welcome to Kongens Have, or The King's Garden, the oldest and most visited park in central Copenhagen. Because even a king needs an impressive backyard. Back in sixteen oh six, King Christian the Fourth bought land just outside the city ramparts to build a Renaissance style pleasure garden. Now, a Renaissance garden was highly practical, focusing on geometric order and active cultivation. It essentially served as a royal grocery store, supplying mulberries, wine grapes, apples, and lavender directly to the royal household. Over the decades, the modest pavilion sitting on these grounds was expanded into the massive Rosenborg Castle standing before you.

As European fashions shifted, the garden received a major architectural upgrade. By sixteen sixty-nine, records show the addition of a complex garden maze leading to an octagonal summerhouse, a classic feature of the new Baroque style. Baroque landscapes were all about rigid symmetry and showing nature exactly who was boss. In seventeen eleven, a visionary head gardener named Johan Cornelius Krieger took over and fully committed to this aesthetic. He laid out the twelve hectare park in a strict grid pattern, cutting through it with two dominant diagonal avenues lined with lime trees. One is known as the Knight's Path, and the other is the Lady's Path, intersecting perfectly near the center of the park.

Tucked among this engineered greenery is a rather petty piece of public art. Commissioned in sixteen seventeen, the oldest sculpture here is called The Horse and the Lion. It depicts a lion with a strangely humanoid face viciously tearing down a horse. Officially, it is a copy of an antique Roman sculpture representing the mythical battle between light and darkness. Unofficially? It was a monumental passive aggressive jab. Christian the Fourth was absolutely furious at his cousin for failing to send military backup during the disastrous Battle of Lutter in sixteen twenty-six. So, the king used this statue to vent his frustrations, with the victorious lion representing the Danish coat of arms, and the dying horse representing his cousin's territory.

If you trace the perimeter of the garden, you will notice a neat wrought iron grill incorporating small shop pavilions. After the devastating Copenhagen Fire of seventeen ninety-five, City Architect Peter Meyn needed to create a beautiful barrier for the newly built residential streets. Heavily inspired by the bustling merchant bridges of Paris, he designed these small neoclassical structures. They were built exactly six ells wide and six ells high, an ell being an old measurement of about two feet. Merchants originally sold cakes and stockings out of them, and today they are still rented out for contemporary art and design.

If you want to explore the grounds, the park is open every day from seven in the morning until ten at night.

Take a moment to appreciate this grand horticultural flex before we move forward.

On your left, look for a pale symmetrical building featuring a deep central alcove framed by two stout columns, housing a dramatic stone statue of a man wrestling a lion.

This is the Hercules Pavilion. When King Christian the Fourth built the original structure here in sixteen oh six, he engineered a rather clever trick. He installed hidden acoustic channels in the walls so his guests could enjoy invisible music on the upper floor while the orchestra played out of sight below.

In sixteen seventy-one, King Christian the Fifth upgraded the building into an eremitage, a private retreat where royals could dine without servants eavesdropping. He solved the privacy problem through sheer mechanics, building a dining table that was fully set in the downstairs kitchen and then hoisted up through a trapdoor. An elegant solution.

By seventeen seventy-two, the park had fallen into decay. A royal commission wanted to scrap almost everything, but architect C-F Harsdorff intervened. Pull up your screen to see the classical facade he designed in seventeen seventy-three. Harsdorff carved out that deep central niche specifically to house the Hercules statue, which a previous king had shipped all the way from Florence.

By eighteen ten, the pavilion found its modern calling when a confectioner began serving punch and lemonade to the public. It still operates as a moderately priced cafe today, open from nine in the morning until six or seven in the evening depending on the day.

Take your time admiring the clever architecture. When you are ready to move on, we will head to our next location.

Look to your left for a stately red brick townhouse with strictly ordered white-framed windows and an elegant double doorway. Check your screen for a wider look at the exterior. Supreme Court lawyer Christian Ludvig David owned this building. He filled it with fine art, and then, rather generously, turned his home into a public foundation in nineteen forty-five. The doors opened in nineteen forty-eight. Upon his death in nineteen sixty, David left his entire fortune to the museum. Today, the David Collection houses eighteenth-century European art arranged as original nineteenth-century room interiors, plus Danish works featuring eleven paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi. However, the true marvel is the Islamic art collection. Spanning from Spain to India across the eighth to the nineteenth centuries, it is the largest of its kind in Scandinavia and ranks in the top ten worldwide. As part of the Parkmuseerne network, you can visit Tuesday through Sunday from ten A-M to five P-M, and until nine P-M on Wednesdays. It is a quiet powerhouse of global history hiding behind a polite facade. Whenever you are ready, we will head to our next destination.

Look at the image on your screen to spot the original long rectangular stone hall with its steep pitched roof and prominent vertical buttresses, marking exactly what once stood right in front of you.

Welcome to the ghost of Saint Clare's Priory. In fourteen ninety-seven, King John the First and Queen Christina donated the former royal vegetable gardens to establish a monastery for the Poor Clares, a Catholic order of nuns. The Queen chipped in forty Rhenish Guilders, roughly ten thousand U-S dollars today, to get construction moving. By August eleven, fifteen oh five, they consecrated a sprawling complex featuring a dormitory, a refectory for dining, a church, and an infirmary.

You would think royal backing guaranteed smooth sailing. But the Protestant Reformation soon swept through, and public opinion turned against mendicant orders, religious groups that relied entirely on daily charity. The locals nicknamed them the beggar nuns, decided they were an unfair financial burden on top of regular church taxes, and promptly shut their wallets.

By fifteen twenty-seven, the priory was in such deep financial trouble that the abbess resorted to smuggling a chest of money to desperately poor sister nuns in Odense. She hid the cash transfer entirely because she feared the public would openly mock the order if they knew just how broke they really were.

Things went from bad to worse. The city fathers explicitly banned the nuns from collecting alms on the street. The sisters had to rely on friars who were only allowed to beg forty miles outside the city, making food transport a total logistical nightmare. Finally, in fifteen thirty-six, Denmark officially became Lutheran. The Crown seized the property, and the nuns left the order.

The Crown transformed the largest building into the Royal Mint in fifteen forty-one. Today, this street is still called Gammel Mønt, or Old Mint, even though the physical buildings burned to the ground in the great fire of seventeen twenty-eight.

You can explore this historic stretch of street every day from seven AM to six PM. Imagine the lost echoes of this street before we move along to the next site.

Look to your right to find a striking, red painted timber framed building resting on a black plinth, topped by a prominent triangular gabled dormer. Tap your screen to see a wider shot of this ten bay facade, a perfect surviving specimen of eighteenth century architectural problem solving.

The year was seventeen thirty-three. Five years earlier, the great Copenhagen Fire of seventeen twenty-eight had wiped out most of this area. The previous building on this exact spot belonged to Poul Andersen Holm, an assistant pastor. Unfortunately for Poul, his theological credentials did not make his roof fireproof. His house burned completely to the ground.

The lot was divided, and a man named Niels Hansen Sandager built the structure you are looking at right now. Niels was clearly proud of his investment. If you check your app, you can see a close up of the keystone above the central arched gateway, bearing the letters N-H-S and the year seventeen thirty-three.

Now, looking at its charming facade, you might think of this as a comfortable home for a single prosperous family. Nineteenth century Copenhagen had a drastically different definition of comfort.

By the eighteen forty census, forty-five people were living inside this single property. Yes, forty-five. It was an absolute hive of master craftsmen. The registry lists tailors, dyers, policemen, and shoemakers all packed together. The building was practically groaning under the weight of humanity. In just one apartment on the second floor, a servant named Iver Nielsen lived with his wife, two caretakers, and three lodging soldiers. You can only imagine the sheer logistical nightmare of coordinating breakfast in that household.

The living arrangements often blended family and business in ways that practically invite disaster. Rewind to the eighteen oh one census, and you will find Isach Lund, a master shoemaker. Isach needed an apprentice. He ended up hiring his wife's fifteen year old brother. Mixing marriage, business, and an adolescent brother-in-law in a cramped eighteenth century apartment usually guarantees a complete breakdown of domestic peace. Fortunately for Isach, apprentices at the time were expected to work gruelingly long hours, so he likely kept the boy too busy cutting leather to cause any serious household drama.

From an engineering standpoint, this building's survival is remarkable. That timber framing you see on the front... the exposed heavy wooden skeleton... gave the structure enough flexibility to handle the daily stress of dozens of heavy footfalls marching up and down the stairs. Meanwhile, two massive brick chimneys in the back yard handled the near constant smoke generated by seven separate households cooking their meals and heating their cramped rooms simultaneously.

Today, Skindergade eight stands as a remarkably preserved monument to the extreme urban density of Copenhagen's past, cleverly disguised in a very polite red package. Once you have taken in this cleverly designed survivor, let us keep walking.

On your right stands a massive cylindrical tower built of light brown brick, featuring columns of deeply recessed arched windows that curve their way up to a wrought-iron viewing platform at the top. Take a look at the image on your device. My digital database seems to have suffered a rather magnificent glitch here, abruptly pivoting from Danish architecture to an Anglo-Saxon king of East Anglia named Rædwald. But since his story of sheer survival is fantastic, we are going to dive into it anyway.

Rædwald, whose name translates from Old English as 'power in counsel', ruled from around five ninety-nine to six twenty-four. He was a member of the Wuffingas dynasty. Historical details are a bit scarce because Viking invasions in the ninth century destroyed the local monasteries where all the paperwork was kept. But the fragments we do have paint a picture of a man who survived through brilliant, if slightly chaotic, pragmatism.

Early on, Rædwald ruled under the authority of Æthelberht, the king of Kent. Through this political connection, Rædwald became the first king of the East Angles to convert to Christianity, getting baptized sometime before six hundred and five. However, he was a deeply practical man. Not wanting to infuriate his pagan wife or alienate his household, he set up a temple with two altars. One was dedicated to Christ, and right next to it, another was dedicated to the old pagan gods. Just hedging his bets.

His ultimate test of character came when a royal exile named Edwin arrived at his door. Edwin was running from his rival, Æthelfrith of Northumbria, and sought asylum. Æthelfrith sent messengers offering massive amounts of silver to have Edwin assassinated. Rædwald declined. Æthelfrith tried a second and third time, offering even more wealth and promising immediate war if Rædwald refused. The king actually caved and considered handing his guest over, but his pagan queen fiercely intervened. She reminded him that selling a desperate friend for cash was completely dishonorable. Shamed into doing the right thing, Rædwald refused the silver and chose war.

In six sixteen, Rædwald marched his army north to the River Idle. The battle was an absolute bloodbath. Rædwald's son, Rægenhere, was killed in the chaos. Enraged by the terrible loss, Rædwald smashed through the enemy lines himself and killed Æthelfrith, securing a decisive victory.

This triumph made Rædwald the most powerful English king south of the Humber estuary. He was later recognized as a bretwalda, an Old English term meaning 'wide-ruler' or high king. When he died around six twenty-four, historians believe he became the man buried in the famous Sutton Hoo ship-burial, a massive mound excavated in nineteen thirty-nine that contained a whole ship filled with gold, garnets, and symbols of immense imperial power.

This tower is open to visitors every day from ten A-M to eight P-M. Take your time reflecting on that rather unexpected history, and we will catch up at the next location.

On your right is the Copenhagen Synagogue. It is a striking piece of architecture, though its history is, quite frankly, geographically miraculous. According to the official documentation I have been provided, this very structure was founded in Kyoto in thirteen twenty-one.

It is true. This synagogue was apparently established by a Nichiren Buddhist monk named Nichizo. Nichiren Buddhism is a branch of Japanese Buddhism entirely devoted to the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. Nichizo was acting on the dying wish of his master, and he built this complex on land granted directly by Emperor Go-Daigo. That made this the very first full-fledged Nichiren temple in Japan's capital. By thirteen thirty-four, it received official imperial recognition.

Now, you might be wondering how a Japanese Buddhist temple ended up as a Jewish house of worship in Denmark. The answer clearly lies in its habit of constant relocation. It moved in thirteen forty-one by order of a retired emperor. Then, things got violent. In thirteen eighty-seven, rival monks from Mount Hiei swept down and completely destroyed the complex. The occupants had to flee to Wakasa Province.

They rebuilt in thirteen ninety-three, thanks to the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. But in fourteen thirteen, those exact same mountain monks came back and destroyed it all over again. You have to admire their terrible persistence.

The temple was rebuilt in fifteen twenty-one, only to burn down fifteen years later in a massive religious rebellion. After another brief exile, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi forced the complex to move in fifteen eighty-four so he could build a castle on its old site. It burned down yet again in the Great Tenmei Fire of seventeen eighty-eight.

Somehow, it survived all of this. If you could see past the brickwork in front of you, my notes assure me you would find nine sub-temples and a grand main hall. In nineteen seventy-five, the ceiling of that hall collapsed, prompting a massive restoration. The coffered ceiling, a decorative structure made of sunken geometric panels, now features the family crests of the donors who funded the repairs. The grounds supposedly host magnificent landscapes, including one modeled after the work of the famous painter Ogata Korin, whose grave rests in one of the sub-temples. There is even a shrine dedicated to the Eight-Tailed Great Dragon God.

It is quite the resume for a building in the heart of Copenhagen. If you want to investigate this architectural paradox yourself, the doors are open Monday through Thursday from ten A-M to two P-M. Take your time admiring this geographical paradox. Whenever you are ready, we will carry on.

Look to your left at the grand facade of Borchs Kollegium. If you glance at your screen, you can see a close-up of the impressive entrance portal we are standing in front of right now. Ole Borch officially founded this institution as the Collegium Mediceum on the twenty-ninth of May, sixteen ninety-one. He established it to house exactly sixteen students who were poor, pious, and highly educated. A somewhat demanding checklist.

The brick building you are looking at is actually version three point zero. The seventeen twenty-eight fire that consumed the city reduced the original structure, complete with a chemistry lab and massive library, to ash. The college rebuilt it three years later at a cost of fifty-five hundred rigsdaler... a small fortune translating to a few million dollars today. And then it burned down again. During the eighteen oh seven British bombardment, the students here actually took up arms and fought the landing troops. Despite their bravery, British artillery pummeled the area, and the college went up in flames on the fourth of September.

Architect Peder Malling finally designed the fire-resistant survivor standing before you, and the university inaugurated it in May eighteen twenty-five. Spanning nearly a century and a half, this comparison reveals how the historic Borchs Kollegium has proudly stood the test of time along Store Kannikestraede since its reconstruction.

It has housed some serious heavyweights. Ludvig Holberg, a famous Scandinavian writer, served as the efor... essentially the college warden... in the mid-eighteenth century. The college also hosted alumnus number seven oh three, the historian Jens Paludan-Müller. He died in battle during the Second Schleswig War on the sixth of February, eighteen sixty-four. His memorial stone sits out back, bearing a poetic command: inward, forward, upward. Even modern politicians like Margrete Auken lived right in the porter's lodge in nineteen seventy-one.

This institution has an undeniable knack for endurance. Take a moment to admire the sturdy brickwork, and whenever you are ready, we will head to our next stop.

Look to your left, where you will find an eleven-foot-tall white marble statue of a figure in heavily draped robes, standing on a stone base with hands stretched outward.

This is Christus. It owes its existence to a rather aggressive urban renewal project by the British Royal Navy. In September eighteen oh seven, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British bombarded Copenhagen and burned the Church of Our Lady to the ground. When the Danes finally rebuilt the church, they commissioned their star sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen, to design the interior. He was tasked with creating a baptismal font, decorative elements, and statues of Jesus and the apostles. He notably included Paul instead of Judas Iscariot.

Thorvaldsen was a clever problem solver. Marble is unforgiving, and carving it takes a massive amount of time. Take a glance at your app to see his original eighteen twenty-two plaster cast model. Thorvaldsen simply supplied this plaster version for the church's consecration in June eighteen twenty-nine. It bought him four more years to work on the final piece, which was carved from gleaming white Carrara marble from Tuscany and finally swapped in during November eighteen thirty-three.

The statue depicts the resurrected Jesus. If you look at the base, the Danish inscription reads Kommer til mig, meaning Come unto me. This is a direct nod to the Bible verse Matthew chapter eleven, verse twenty-eight. Thorvaldsen deliberately posed the figure with hands spread open and leaning slightly forward, ensuring the display of the wounds in the hands was impossible to miss.

Now, if you think this design looks familiar, you are completely right. It is one of the most widely reproduced religious sculptures in the world. Its reach is frankly astonishing. You will find replicas everywhere from a hospital in Baltimore, to a church made of thirty thousand white Lego pieces in Sweden, to a cemetery in Texas. You can pull up your screen to see that very unexpected bronze Texas version.

But the most prolific distributor of the Christus franchise is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the late nineteen fifties, a church leader named Stephen L Richards purchased an exact twelve-thousand-pound marble replica. Moving a six-ton block of delicate Italian marble to Salt Lake City, Utah, in nineteen fifty-nine was a logistical nightmare, but it paid off. They placed it in their North Visitors Center, and it became a central icon. The church loved the impact so much they commissioned more massive replicas for the nineteen sixty-four New York World's Fair and the nineteen seventy Expo in Osaka, Japan.

Imagine shipping an eleven-thousand-pound marble statue from Italy to Japan, storing it in a warehouse for six years, and then putting it on another boat to New Zealand. The shipping manifests alone are enough to make a modern supply chain manager weep.

In April two thousand and twenty, the church officially made the Christus image the central element of their new symbol. From a destroyed church in nineteenth-century Copenhagen to a globally recognized icon, Thorvaldsen's precise, calculated design did exactly what he built it to do. It commands the room, no matter which room in the world it happens to be standing in.