Twelve colossal marble apostles line the nave of Copenhagen's cathedral, leading the eye toward Bertel Thorvaldsen's serene Christ figure above the altar - a sculptural programme so dominant that the building is sometimes described as more Thorvaldsen's church than the architect's. The site on Norregade has carried a church since the late 1100s, when Bishop Absalon's successors raised a chalk-stone Church of Our Lady that was completed around 1209. Fire and war treated its successors brutally: t.....

A bronze bishop on horseback rises above Hojbro Plads, axe in hand, gazing toward the island of Slotsholmen where his fortress once stood. The equestrian statue portrays Absalon (c. 1128-1201), the warrior-bishop of Roskilde and later archbishop of Lund who is credited as the founder of Copenhagen: around 1167 he built a castle on the islet that now carries Christiansborg Palace, and the fishing village beside it grew into the Danish capital. The monument was created by sculptor Vilhelm Bissen .....

Denmark's national HIV and AIDS organisation has its headquarters at Vestergade 18E in central Copenhagen, a few minutes from Radhuspladsen. Founded in 1987, AIDS-Fondet works with prevention, advocacy and support for people living with HIV, and the Vestergade address also houses Checkpoint, its community clinic offering free, anonymous testing and counselling for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections on walk-in and appointment basis. The premises are primarily offices and clinic space r.....

Classical drawing is taught here as a craft to be trained, not a talent you either have or lack. Akademiets Skoler, founded in 1986, is a private drawing and design school on Stockholmsgade in Copenhagen's Osterbro district, about five minutes from Osterport station, and has prepared generations of students for careers and further study in illustration, design, architecture, animation and the other aesthetic disciplines. The school runs courses for children, teenagers and adults alike: classica.....

Museum restaurants rarely earn their own cookbook, but Apollo did: the courtyard restaurant of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, at the mouth of Nyhavn beside Kongens Nytorv, is the home kitchen of chef Frederik Bille Brahe, one of the defining figures of Copenhagen's casual-fine-dining wave. The setting is the historic courtyard of the 17th-century Charlottenborg palace, which houses the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and its contemporary exhibition hall - no exhibition ticket is required to eat here.....

From the street it looks like any other classic Copenhagen shopfront, but behind the window on the corner of Stormgade and H.C. Andersens Boulevard archaeologists sit sorting, washing and registering finds dug up from beneath the city's streets. The Archaeological Workshop (Arkaeologisk Vaerksted) is a working facility of the Museum of Copenhagen, opened in 2017 on the back of the huge public interest in archaeology generated by the metro excavations. On selected open days - typically during sc.....

Taxidermied animals in fancy dress stare down from the walls of Bankeraat: deer heads on human mannequin bodies, doll-head lamps and candlelit corners have made this corner cafe in the Nansensgade quarter one of Copenhagen's most photographed interiors. Opened in 1992 (some sources date the founding to 1989), it styles itself the city's original bohemian cafe and reshaped local cafe culture as a home for students, artists, musicians, night owls and neighbourhood regulars. By day it is a classic.....

With more than 1,000 beds upstairs, the bar of Danhostel Copenhagen City never lacks company. BAR50 occupies the ground floor of the high-rise hostel on H.C. Andersens Boulevard by Langebro bridge, and works in shifts: breakfast room in the morning, cafe through the day with coffee, cakes and snacks, and from evening a proper bar pouring draught beer, bottled specials, cocktails and wine with a view over the harbour canal. The design-hostel setting - Gubi furniture and Bestlite lamps run throug.....

A former boiler room in a Vesterbro backyard, next door to the Vega concert houses, is the raw shell for one of Copenhagen's most distinctive small venues. Basement, run by the City of Copenhagen's culture unit Byliv Vesterbro, keeps the space deliberately unpolished - bare walls, high ceilings and what its own team calls a rough, unique frame without Danish comparison - and fills it with an experimental programme where literature, performance art, concerts and the electronic underground meet. .....

Several rival markets now trade on the great open field of Bellahojmarken in Copenhagen's Bronshoj district, and the name Bellahoj Kraemmermarked has a tangled history among them. The original flea-and-traders market was launched by local volunteers in September 1991, dreamed up in the neighbourhood council and run to raise money for local sports clubs' youth work; it was an instant success, mixing hundreds of traders' stalls with live music across all styles, and it still runs every year in ear.....