Copenhagen - Vesterbro and Frederiksberg Travel Guides | Copenhagen | Sub Regions | Copenhagen - Vesterbro and Frederiksberg

Although the area immediately behind the railway station has plenty of hotels and sex shops, Vesterbro is not tourist land and a stroll down Istedgade offers a window on contemporary Copenhagen. In the 19th century, the city authorities came to regard the area as suitable ground for a working-class ghetto and thousands of tiny apartments were crammed into unsanitary housing blocks. Recent renovation work is gentrifying parts of Vesterbro, and an ethnic dimension is added by immigrants from Asia and Africa who settled in the area when rents were low. The result is a pleasing mix of people and classes, which is more than can be found along the tree-lined boulevards and elegant gardens of snooty Frederiksberg further to the west. While Istedgade sums up Vesterbro, the best approach to Frederiksberg is by way of stately Frederiksberg Allé which branches off Vesterbrogade and terminates at the main entrance to a grand park and gardens, one of which jumps into life in the summer when hosting gigs for the city’s jazz festival. Places of interest in Vesterbro and Frederiksberg are as diverse as the areas themselves, including a porcelain factory and a planetarium.

Sights

Bus 16 (Istedgade), 6,28,550S (Vesterbrogade).

These two streets, running sort-of parallel from Central Station westwards, are Vesterbro’s main arteries, but they differ markedly in character. Vesterbrogade begins at Rådhuspladsen, passing the side of Tivoli before metamorphosing into a prime shopping street shortly after passing the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel. It is a lively street with a variety of places to eat and shops that range from an all-purpose department store, with a supermarket at ground level, to a host of smaller retail stores.

Strolling westwards along Istedgade throws up Copenhagen’s social character like stratified layers of geological time. To begin with, to the rear of Central Station, there is evidence of what passes for the city’s low life, but being Denmark it is all perfectly civilized and visitors have nothing to fear from huddled individuals exchan- ging little packets and cans of beer. Within a couple of hundred metres of walking down Istedgade, three-star hotels begin to predominate, and as quickly again the street gives way to sex shops as a seedy tawdriness threatens to, but never actually succeeds, in defining the atmosphere. The human landscape becomes an interesting mix, distinctly non-bourgeois, ethnic and semi-gentrified, with no surfeit of Danes with glacial good looks to make you feel inadequate. Istedgade terminates at Enghave Plads and a small park, where anarchists gather on 1 May to start their feeder procession that joins the trade union marches through the city.

Vesterbrogade 59, T 33210772, http://www.bymuseum.dk May-Sep, Wed-Mon 1000-1600, Oct-Apr, Wed-Mon 1300-1600. Film 1115, 1245, 1415 (worth seeing). Adults 20kr, children free. Free on Fri. Buses 6, 28, 550S.

The City Museum, a series of well-presented exhibition rooms organized chronologically and with everything in English, offers a more enjoyable way to engage with Copenhagen’s past than plodding through a dull history book. There is plenty to see, well meriting the admission price, including a large model of the city  in 1660 and a modest exhibition on Kierkegaard that includes his writing desk and the 25-minute-film in English. The museum is housed in a mansion built by the Royal Shooting Society in 1787 and its banquet room, which stands as renovated a century later, is now a very pleasant café serving drinks, cakes, beer and wine.

Gammel Kongevej 10, T 33121224, http://www.tycho.dk Mon, Fri-Sun 1030-2100, Tue and Thu 0930-2100, Wed 0945-2100. Adults 85kr, children 65kr. Buses 1, 14, 16.

The admission price is a bit steep, what you are paying for is the experience of an Omnimax 1000m2 dome screen. There is a good choice of film topics – from dolphins to 3D technology, the human body, Antarctica, caves, ancient Egypt – with headphones for those in Danish.

Hammerischsgade 1, T 33426000. Buses 6, 28, 550S.

The unprepossessing glass tower of the hotel that the world-renowned Arne Jacobsen designed remains a city landmark if only by virtue of its height. Voted the ugliest building in the city when completed in 1960, the aesthetic appeal of what became the ‘landmark of the Jet Age’ remains evasive and Jacobsen’s interior design attracted both derision and praise. Critics could not get their heads around his combination of a minimalist style with loosely organic forms and a strict functionalism, dismissing his approach as outlandishly avant garde, while others admired the simple elegance and subdued luxury. The lobby has been preserved unchanged, still furnished with the famous Swan and Egg chairs designed for the hotel. Here, too, can be seen the curved staircase, cutting-edge style at a time when technical skills were carried to their extreme to create such a slight structure, and the adjoining bar area comes complete with Jacobsen-designed ashtrays. Room 606 has been retained exactly as it was first designed and if you have a special interest, or ask nicely, you may be allowed to view it.

Gamle Carlsberg Vej 11, T 33271314. Mon-Fri 1000-1600. Free. Buses 6, 18.

Catching a bus avoids a walk up Pile Allé, though knowing there is a free drink at the end of your visit to the centre helps the flagging spirit on a hot day. You don’t get to see the actual brewery, a self-guided tour leads visitors around mildly-interesting displays on the history and technology of brewing the famous lager, but when passing the Elephant Gate note the decorative swastikas. At one time swastikas were seen as a symbol of quality and cleanliness and Carlsberg adopted them as such, and they could be seen on bottles until the Second World War. To find out more about the history of Carlsberg and its founding brewer, the benevolent Christen Jacobsen, there is also the separate Carlsberg Museum.

Rahbeks Allé 23, T 33314362, http://www.bakkehusmuseet.dk Wed-Thu, Sat-Sun 1100-1500. Adults 10kr. Buses 6, 18, 550S.

Situated between Frederiksberg Have and Carlsberg Brewery, the Bakkehus Museum pays homage to the intellectual culture of Denmark’s Golden Age (1780-1830) and its sense of style. The museum was once the private home of Knud Lyne Rahbek and his wife Kamma, at the start of the 19th century, and is now home to a catholic collection of cultural bric-a-brac. Knud Lyne was a professor of literature and became famous for the literary salon he hosted in his home, Hans Christian Andersen being a regular visitor. The fact that today Bakkehusmuseet attracts only a modest number of visitors helps allow the place to maintain that sense of stylish repose that is associated with the Golden Age.

Smallegad 47, T 38149297, http://www.royalcopenhagen.com Tours Mon-Fri 1000, 1100, 1300, 1400. Shop Mon-Fri 0900-1730, Sun 0900-1400. Adults 25kr. Buses 1,14, 39, 100S.

The famous Danish porcelain company moved here in 1884, over a century after its foundation, and the guided tours are interesting enough to get you hooked on starting a china collection. While the renowned Flora Danica design is beyond most people’s crockery budget, the factory shop sells more affordable pieces and old Royal Copenhagen is sold in antique shops around town .

T 33926300. May-Aug 0700-2200, closing earlier in other months. Chinese Island, May-Sep, Sun 1400-1600. Rowing boats Jun-Aug, Mon-Fri 1000-1700, Sat-Sun 1200-1800. Free. Buses 1, 6, 14, 18, 28.

A conversion job at the end of the 18th century turned the expansive landscape of Frederiksberg Park from baroque to romantic, hence the amalgam of lakes and canals, a Chinese pavilion on a small island, plus a neoclassical Temple of Apis for a touch of ancient Greek enlightenment. Always a popular escape for apartment-living Copenhageners, Frederiksberg Park offers itself as an ideal picnic spot in between visiting the brewery, Royal Copenhagen factory and the zoo .

Roskildevej 32, T 36162244. Guided tours 1100, last Sat of month. Adults 25kr. Buses 6, 18, 28, 550S.

The yellow palace building on top of the hill at the southern end of the park is Frederiksberg Castle, a summer pad for the royals for around 150 years after Frederik IV had the place built in the early 18th century. Frederiksberg Allé was built as a private road for the royal entourage to reach the stately residence, and you have to imagine the fine view which the palace would have commanded looking east across the city towards Sweden. Tours of the interior are infrequent so you may have to content yourself with admiring the fine simplicity of the exterior, originally designed to imitate the grand Italian villas that so impressed Frederik on one of his European jaunts. The building was modified by subsequent royals, most notably by Christian VI, who had the two side wings added in the middle of the 18th century. The monthly tour inside the building is worth considering because the decorative stucco and painted ceilings have been wonderfully well preserved and, unlike Rosenborg Slot, do not overwhelm to the point of overkill. The palace now belongs to the Ministry of Defence and houses the Royal Military Academy.

It’s easy to confuse the park and castle of Frederiksberg with the park and castle of Frederiksborg, which is outside Copenhagen in the town of Hillerød,

Travel Guides | Copenhagen | Sub Regions | Copenhagen - Vesterbro and Frederiksberg
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