CitiesDenmark
In 1429 Erik of Pomerania began charging every foreign ship that passed through the Øresund, and pointed the guns of a castle at Helsingør to collect. The Sound Dues ran for more than four centuries and at their height brought in something close to two-thirds of the Danish crown's income. Denmark did not build an empire so much as install a tollbooth on a strait. Copenhagen is what four hundred years of that money bought.
The canal of painted eighteenth-century houses that appears on every photograph of the city, dug in the 1670s as a working harbour so cargo could reach the centre. It was a sailors' district with a bad reputation for most of its life. Hans Christian Andersen lived at three separate addresses along it.
The seat of parliament, the supreme court and the prime minister's office, which makes it the only building in the world housing all three branches of a country's government. It has burned down twice. Underneath, the excavated ruins of Absalon's twelfth-century castle are open to visitors, several metres below the current floor.
A seventeenth-century observatory tower climbed by a spiral ramp rather than stairs, wide enough that a horse and carriage could be driven to the top and reportedly were. The ramp exists because instruments had to be hauled up. It is still a working observatory, and the oldest in Europe still in use.
An amusement park of 1843 sitting in the middle of the capital, immediately outside the main railway station. Its founder is said to have argued that a people who amuse themselves do not concern themselves with politics, which is a strikingly cynical origin for somewhere so pleasant. Walt Disney visited before building his own park.
Four near-identical rococo palaces facing each other across an octagonal courtyard, and the royal family's actual home rather than a museum. They were built for four noble families and bought by the crown after Christiansborg burned. The changing of the guard happens whether or not anyone is watching.
A baroque church in Christianshavn with an external spiral staircase winding up the outside of its spire to the top. You climb it in the open air, and the final turns are narrow enough to be genuinely unpleasant in wind. The architect is the subject of a persistent local story about jumping from it, which is untrue.
A self-declared autonomous community occupying a former military barracks since 1971, with a long and unresolved relationship to Danish law. It is neither a tourist attraction nor entirely not one. Photography is restricted in parts of it and the restriction is taken seriously rather than posted decoratively.
A bronze statue of 1913, about 125 centimetres tall, commissioned by a brewer after he saw a ballet of the Andersen story. It is small, close to the shore, and the most reliably disappointing sight in Scandinavia. It has been decapitated more than once and repaired each time.
A Renaissance summer house built by Christian IV, now holding the crown jewels in a basement treasury. Christian IV built compulsively across Copenhagen and much of what looks characteristically Danish in the old city is his. The garden outside is where the city goes when the weather permits, which is not often.
Denmark ran a tollbooth on a strait for four hundred years and got rich on it.
The Sound Dues, imposed from 1429, charged foreign ships passing through the Øresund. At their height in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they supplied up to two-thirds of the Danish crown's entire income.
Ships that refused to pay were shot at.
Kronborg's cannons at Helsingør enforced the toll on vessels that tried to pass without settling. The revenue also paid for converting the older Krogen fortress into the castle Shakespeare would use as Elsinore.
The tolls ended in a buyout, not a war.
The Copenhagen Convention of 1857 ended the Sound Dues by agreement: Denmark accepted a lump sum from the trading nations in exchange for permanently free passage. A four-century revenue stream was closed by cheque.
One building holds all three branches of a national government.
Christiansborg houses the Danish parliament, the supreme court and the prime minister's office simultaneously, which is not true of any other building anywhere. It has also burned down twice, which explains why so little of it looks old.
You can drive a carriage up Copenhagen's oldest observatory.
The Rundetårn is climbed by a wide spiral ramp rather than stairs, built so that heavy instruments could be hauled to the top. It is the oldest functioning observatory in Europe and the ramp has reportedly carried a horse and carriage.
Tivoli was founded on the theory that entertained people do not revolt.
The park opened in 1843, and its founder is credited with arguing to the king that a population busy amusing itself would not trouble itself with politics. Walt Disney is said to have visited before designing his own park.
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