Copenhagen - Christiania and around Travel Guides | Copenhagen | Sub Regions | Copenhagen - Christiania and around

Christiania on the island of Christianshavn, much more than a social laboratory in alternative living, is a bustling and buzzing venue when the restaurants, cafés and stalls are teeming with patrons. The place fascinates Danes as much as foreigners and the guided tour is recommended as a quick introduction to this multi-faceted community that mixes anarchists with hard-nosed dealers, and canny careerists with 21st-century hippies. By reboarding bus no 8 from near the entrance to Christiania you travel north to Holmen, a disused naval station area that is now witnessing an imaginative transformation of naval buildings into homes, offices and centres for art schools and other institutions. Holmen has no specific attractions, but the industrial architecture, like the crane used to raise oak masts onto sailing vessels, is evocative and recalls the era when Greenland and Iceland were colonial possessions and Denmark ruled the waves, of the North Atlantic anyway. The same atmosphere pervades parts of upper Strandgade, the main street running off to the left as you come over Knippelsbro Bridge to Christianshavn. Home to a community of Greenlanders, Christianshavn provides the setting for the opening scenes of Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow .

Prinsessegade, T 32956507, http://www.chistiania.org Bus 8. Metro, Christianshavn. To get to Christiania in a hurry: take the metro or bus 8 from outside the Thai Airways building on Rådhuspladsen or, exiting Central Station on the Tivoli side, turn right for the bus stop where the 8 also stops. Whether walking down Prinsessegade from the metro station, or alighting from the no 8 bus which stops near the main entrance on the same street don’t use the entrance directly by the bus stop, walk back about 100 m and take the first entrance on the left.

Sights

Your very first impression of Christiania can be a dismal one. A makeshift look to the entrance area and a few down-and-outs hanging about don’t make for an auspicious start, but it all livens up considerably once you walk through and find yourself at the head of Pusher Street. Along this street and running off it on both sides are cafés, bars, restaurants and stalls, and the first street on the right leads to Loppen, a long building with the Spiseloppen restaurant and a music venue. Pusher Street is infamous for its stalls retailing soft drugs because the smoking of cannabis is not legal in Denmark. As in parts of England, the police are generally tolerant to non-dealers but it is only in Christiania that dealers get away with openly displaying and selling their gear and only here that smokers can enjoy the habit without looking over their shoulder. Hard drugs are strictly not available for a mix of practical and idealistic reasons. The dope dealers run private businesses and run the risk of having their stock confiscated during a police raid so they don’t want to attract any more attention from the authorities than they receive already; hence their prohibition on taking photographs on Pusher Street. Note, too, that the police have the power to arrest drug users within Denmark, just as their counterparts do back home when visitors go through customs.

Sankt Annægade, T 32572998, http://www.vorfrelserskirke.dk Church 0900-1700, free. Tower Apr-Aug 1100-1630, Sep-Mar 1100-1530 and closed between Nov and Mar. Adults 20kr. Buses 8. Metro, Christianshavn.

The Church of Our Saviour was completed in 1696 and the grand Dutch Baroque style of the interior continues to dazzle when light pours in through the high windows. The altar was designed by a Swede in a Rome-inspired Baroque style, centred with a golden sun spreading light on the angels who frisk playfully in its rays, but the Lutheran influence keeps the ornate embellishments to a minimum. The massive church organ was not finished until 1700 and while it looks as if it might be supported on the backs of two stucco elephants, large iron brackets are doing this job. The real attraction of the church is its 1752 spiral tower, built in pine and covered with copper, with a whacky external staircase that twists around the tower to the top. Above you, as you stand on the highest and narrowest point of the stairs is a gilded globe on which stands a flag-bearing figure. A popular legend says that the Danish architect Laurids de Thurah committed suicide by jumping off the tower when he realized the staircase  wound to the right instead of the left. A good story that could be used to hold many an architect to account but actually not true; de Thurah died in poverty seven years after the tower was completed.

Overgaden Oven Vandet 58, T 32546363, http://www.orlogsmuseet.dk Tue-Sun 1200-1600. Adults 30kr, children 20kr. Buses 2, 8, 9, 28, 31, 37, 350S.

Orlogsmuseet is worth a gander on a wet day though anyone with an interest in nautical affairs will revel in the collection of model ships that date back to the 17th century, the naval artillery,

Vor Frelsers Kirke

The spiral staircase is the highlight of a trip to this church – though some would have you believe the low point in the architect’s career. Nautical instruments and assorted paraphernalia. The hands-on bit involves being inside a replica submarine with sound effects. Downstairs among old artillery there is an eating area for picnic lunches, and hot drinks are available.

Orlogsmuseet is not the only reminder of Christianshavn’s naval role in history and the area’s specialist Burmeister & Wain Museum, a museum dedicated to the diesel engine, is named after a shipbuilding company that had large shipyards here.

Under German occupation in the Second World War the shipyards were used to make U-boat engines and for this reason, searly in 1943, became the target for the first Allied air raid on Copenhagen.

Strandgade 27B, T 32571930, http://www.gammeldock.dk Mon-Fri 1000-1700, Sat-Sun 1100-1600. Adults 30kr.

This centre occupies an 18th-century warehouse on the site of the city’s first dock and serves as an exhibition space for the work of designers and architects. The shows are usually first-rate and the warehouse building itself has been most sensitively restored. A stroll further north along Strandgade reveals more examples of smart renovation work on old warehouses that once stored huge quantities of skin and oil from whales caught off Greenland and Iceland, and brought here by boat in Denmark’s colonial days.

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