Musical Events

Each year in the beginning of July, since 1979, Copenhagen has a Jazz Festival for about 10 days with big international starts attending like Herbie Hancock, Tony Allen and Sonny Rollins and Ray Charles. The festival in 2006 gave 850 performances and concerts and about 240.000 people attended the festivities.

Fun and Fair

In 1843 the Tivoli Gardens opened and is today a famous amusement and pleasure garden in the heart of Copenhagen. The park is most known for its wooden rollercoaster constructed in Sweden in 1914 and is today one of the oldest wooden structured, still operational, roller coasters in the world. It also features the highest carousel in the world measuring a height of 80 meters. The Gardens also host a lot of different concerts during the summer months.

A Little Statue

The most known and fascinating statue in Copenhagen is “The Little Mermaid” which sits on a rock in the harbor in Churchill Park. Then statue was uncovered in 1913 after Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, had seen a ballet about the fairytale and was fascinated by it. And as the name indicates it is a small statue only measuring 1.25m high. Due to vandalism of the statue during several occasions over the years the Copenhagen officials have announced that it may come to be moved further out in the sea to prevent future vandalism and tourists climbing on it.

Crown Jewels

In the center of Copenhagen lies the Rosenborg Castle which was built by Christian IV as a country summerhouse in 1606. The castle was opened to the public in 1838 and is a popular attraction since it is easy reachable by public transportation and by the fact that the tours given includes the exhibition of the Crown Jewels and Denmark's globus cruciger. The castle gardens are a popular retreat in the summertime.

A Freetown within the Capital

The name Christiania is related to a self-governing neighborhood founded in 1971 when people from different backgrounds took over recently abandoned barracks that had been used by the military. It was a protest against the Danish government as they felt betrayed by the politicians because of the lack of affordable housing.

The spirit of hippies, communism and the squatter movement spread through Christiania like a wildfire and today no cars are allowed within the area.

The area consist of about 850 inhabitants who have set their own rules for the area forbidding theft, violence, guns, knives, bulletproof vests and selling of hard drugs.

The areas future is now uncertain since the government has pushed on to close down the area and get rid of the drug traffic of the milder drugs that the area has been most known for among foreigners. Humor and persistance is used by the locals to fight the governments attempt to eliminate the area. In 2002 the authorities demanded that the hash trade on “Pusher Street” would be made less visible, the people covered up the stands in military camouflage nets.