3 - Green and clean

Copenhagen wants to be the first CO2 emmissions neutral capital in the world and has already got a date to achieve that objective: the year 2025. The fight against the greenhouse effect and global warming is bringing together everyone: the population, businesses and politicians. The key word is “green” and the plan is to build 14 wind energy turbines in the near future. The light and unpolluted air that you can breathe in the streets is unusual in a big city and there’s a reason for it: 55% of the inhabitants get around on bicycles, which makes traffic jams a rarity. You can see everyone on two wheels: tie-wearing executives, mothers with babies, ladies with a trailer full of supermarket shopping and, at night, no heels prevent anyone from pedalling. Tourists have City Bikes available, which are lent for a deposit of 2.5 euros. The electric City Cirkel buses are another way of visiting tourist attractions without polluting. Organic products are increasingly popular. Everywhere you can read the word “okologist”, on yoghurt, bread or fizzy drinks. There’s even a pseudo-organic Coca-Cola and in the Latin Quarter there are all-natural hot dogs. Bio Mio is the largest restaurant of this type, where the wine and whisky are organic and the staff uniforms are made from Fair Trade cotton.

4 - Art and culture

The museums fight for elbow room in the city centre and there’s something for all tastes. Sculpture? The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, founded by beermaker Carl Jacobsen in 1888, has a sculpture collection that ranges from Greek antiquity and Roman busts to Rodin. In the painting section there is Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Cézanne and other greats. History? The Nationalmuseet tells the tales of Danish adventures, from pre-history to the present day. Art? The Statens Museum for Kunst is the top national gallery and has over 260,000 items of Danish and international art. And there’s more. The history of the Jewish community is on show at the fascinating Dansk Jodisk Museum, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. For something rather different, there’s the Eroticism Museum, which, apart from the Chinese paintings and Greek vases with spicy scenes, explores the sex life of Freud and Nietzsche, and the Carlsberg Visitors Centre, at the beer factory founded in 1847, with free tastings. There’s a new art gallery gathering in an old slaughterhouse and butchers’ centre in the Vesterbro zone. The V1 Gallery represents a group of up-and-coming artists, while the Bo Bjerggaard works with artists of international repute. The Copenhagen Card, which is valid for 24 or 72 hours, gives free entry in museums and other attractions and gives discounts on transport and shops.

5 - Culinary revolution

It was the secret of grandmothers and recipe books hidden at the bottom of drawers. And, suddenly, Danish cuisine has become sophisticated. Top chefs started to explore it, open restaurants and, this year, the Noma was considered the best restaurant in the world by the S. Pellegrino awards, the culinary equivalent of the Oscars. René Redzepi runs a kitchen where local ingredients and techniques reign supreme: fish and seafood, game, forest fruits, mushrooms, raw vegetables, simplicity in preparation and minimalist decoration in an 18th-century naval warehouse. Copenhagen now has 12 restaurants with Michelin stars – a record for a city its size. For everyday eating, residents like to have the traditional “smorrebrod” for lunch. Much easier to eat than to pronounce, this is slices of dark bread with butter and smoked meat, fish, vegetables or cheese – whatever your imagination can conjure up – all washed down with beer or snaps. The Aamanns and The Royal Café raise the “smorrebrod” to a divine art. The Danes are the people in the world who eat the most pork and most of it goes into “rod polse”, red sausages, sold on “polsevognen”, hot-dog vans all over the city, summer or winter, day or night. On the street you can eat anything: crepes with Nutella, bowls of fresh fruit, toasted almonds, shakes, ice-cream; everything on the move so you don’t miss a thing that’s going on in the city.

6 - Streetlife

It’s life than courses through the veins of Copenhagen, people wandering around, pushchairs parked outside shops, fire-eaters, an invisible man attracting crowds and a poor obese viking who only made 3 crowns in two hours. Stroget is the biggest pedestrian street in Europe, bursting with commerce, cafés, pavement cafés, sushi houses, live music, handicrafts and major brand names like Chanel, Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuitton. It stretches from Radhuspladsen (the main square) to Kongens Nytorv, next to the port, Stroget can be tricky, turning any miser into a shopaholic. The Magasin du Nord, the oldest department store in Copenhagen and located in an impressive building, is a consumer paradise, with a supermarket with great Nordic food, like marinated herring, moose patê and pork meatballs. The Norrebro area is becoming well-known for its stylish cafés, avant-garde bars and lots of shopping. It boasts an interesting ethnic mix and young and modern residents. The renaissance of Norrebro began around Sankt Hans Torv, a square full of pavement cafés. Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus is a fashion meeting point.

7 - On the waterfront

The little mermaid – Den Lille Havfrue – has been sitting on a little rock with a melancholy expression for the hordes of tourists since 1913. Only after a nearly a century did her life change: she’s currently in China, decorating the Danish pavilion at the Beijing 2010 Expo. She returns in November. Anyone that turns their back on the lonesome rock will see two green pavilions, used by the royal family when it embarks on the 79-mete-long yacht Dannegrog, which is moored close by. Walking along the waterfront, there’s Amalienborg and Frederiksstaden, a monumental complex of four Rococó palaces, which is the official residence of Queen Margaret and the prince. Port tours – in ecological boats – are the best way of seeing the buzz of Copenhagen from the canals. The boats leave Nyhavn, the old quarter of sailors and bars, which has been redeveloped considerably. The Black Diamond, an extension to the royal library in granite and smoked glass, is the most recent architectural star. The building not only houses books but also a concert hall and the top restaurant Soren K – named thus as a tribute to the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, one of the cities most important figures. The new Opera house is a gem of modern architecture. The canals of Christianshavn reveal a neighbourhood full of charm, like a little Amsterdam, with 17th-century buildings and picturesque houseboats. In a forested area, you can find Christiania, an area occupied by hippies in the ‘70s, where there were different laws and a peculiar lifestyle. Some of the houses in Christiania look like they were built while their owners were under the influence of strong drugs.

8 - The Tivoli gardens

Boys and girls, here is the dream amusement park. Inaugurated in 1843, in the centre of Copenhagen, with gardens, lakes, Chinese pavilions, an Arab palace and a theatre whose curtain is decorated with a giant peacock tail. The Tivoli’s secret is the fact that it has preserved all of this, continuing to light the 120 thousand decorative lights and Chinese lanterns every night and not missing even a boys parade with fanfare, carriages and horses, a performance that has enchanted visitors since 1844. Of course, there are also restaurants, crazy rollercoasters, white-knuckle rides, carousels for small children, red boats going round the lake, an aquarium inspired by a coral reef and live shows. If all of this is not enough, it’s worth mentioning that the Tivoli gardens were a great source of inspiration for Walt Disney, who left the place convinced that he was going to build something similar in America. It was King Christian VIII who gave the land to Georg Carstensen, who had lived in the Middle East and who built oriental-style buildings, a rollercoaster and horse-drawn carousel. The park became so important to the city’s residents that, in 1944, the Nazi occupiers blew up a part of the Tivoli to demoralise the Danes.

9 - Night flight

From the ‘60s onwards, jazz invaded Copenhagen, making the Nordic capital the European New Orleans. American musicians like Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz (who lived in the city for 4 years) and Ben Webster (who stayed in Copenhagen from 1964 until the end of his life – found a tolerant environment and an enthusiastic audience here, quite unlike the reality in the United States. Black musicians discovered Europe during World War II, half a million were fighting on European soil, and here they felt accepted and respected. The phenomenon continues. In Copenhagen there are a huge number of places to hear live music, with both Danish and foreign talent performing. Concerts are always sold out and the variety of genres is immense. There are clubs, bars, dance salons and street music. The Copenhagen JazzHouse presents over 250 shows a year and is also a fashionable club. La Fontaine at twilight is ideal for jam sessions with a more intimate atmosphere. The Copenhagen Jazz Festival is an institution. But there are lots of other festivals and here electronic music is gaining a foothold with two important events: the Strom and the Distortion. For a drink and a dance, there’s the Karriere, a art gallery bar, the Vega and the Culture Box.

10 - Andersen’s city

If every city has a main figure, then in Copenhagen it’s Hans Christian Andersen. Born in 1805, in Odense, the son of a cobbler, at the age of 14 Andersen went to live and study in the capital. “Everyone in the street, the noise and bustle of Copenhagen far exceeded anything I had ever imagined”, he wrote in his diary. As soon as he arrived, he went to the Royal Theatre, decided to be an actor, but he was rarely called upon to act. His true talent lay in writing. It was stories like the Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid that made his reputation. If truth be told, he was the founder of children’s literature. Copenhagen is full of places linked to his name: be it apartments in Nyhavn, numbers 20, 67 and 18, the Hotel d’Angleterre, where he stayed in 1860, or his statue in front of the Town Hall. You can even visit his studios: at Magasin du Nord catch the lift to the third floor, ignore pots and pans and go to the door that leads to the attic. Andersen lived here when he was in his early twenties and a small museum was opened in his room. Next door, is the A Porta café, an elaborately decorated café where the writer used to eat. The amusement park in the Tivoli gardens were a source of constant inspiration for him. Today, there is a carousel in his memory, with 32 scenes from the tales he wrote. Less familiar to the actor is the Hans Christian Andersen museum, on H C Andersen Avenue, in a overly-childish version of the life of a man who took himself very seriously.