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.....

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.....

Bronshoj got a new gathering point when BROK opened its doors by Bronshoj Torv - a municipal culture house at Bronshojvej 3 run by the City of Copenhagen's culture and leisure administration, replacing the neighbourhood's long-serving Kulturhuset Pilegaarden. The name and the motto - "we are together about BROK" - signal the ambition: culture created with the locals, not just served to them, across generations. The house programme mixes concerts, theatre, talks, workshops, flea markets, childre.....

Jazz has largely replaced the organ at Brorsons Kirke, the church on a triangular plot between Rantzausgade and Jesper Brochmands Gade in Copenhagen's Norrebro district. Consecrated at Epiphany 1901 and designed by Thorvald Jorgensen - later the architect of Christiansborg Palace - the church is named after the hymn writer and bishop H.A. Brorson, and was financed by the Copenhagen Church Fund together with a famous "two-ore collection" among Inner Mission supporters that earned it the nickname .....

Copenhagen's Latin American culture house occupies a modest building on Hoffdingsvej in Valby with an unusual back-story: for over two decades it belonged to the Canary Islands association, founded by immigrant workers who arrived in the 1960s. As the members aged and their Spanish government subsidy disappeared in the financial crisis, they handed the house on - in December 2012 the building was transferred for a token 70,000 kroner, and after a few weeks of volunteer renovation, Casa Latinoame.....

Founded in 1859, Copenhagen Zoo is one of the oldest in Europe and has grown from a small collection of birds and farm animals in the Frederiksberg gardens into a leading research and conservation centre that houses thousands of animals on a wooded site on the western edge of the city. The zoo is best known for its Elephant House, designed by the British architect Norman Foster and opened in 2008, where Indian elephants live in spacious paddocks shaded by glass domes that bathe the enclosures i.....

An old tram depot between the lakes and Nansensgade now runs as one of Copenhagen's most self-sufficient culture houses - literally: Kulturhuset Indre By is a self-service house where users scan their health card at the door and let themselves in, staff or no staff, from early morning until 23:00 most days. Inside, the mix is broad. Salen, the main hall, has a proper stage with sound and light rigs and takes 200 standing or 160 seated for theatre, concerts, talks, yoga, dance and conferences; a.....

White lines snake across a jet-black surface between a Moroccan fountain, Chinese palm trees and a giant Japanese octopus slide - this is Den Sorte Plads (The Black Market), the middle section of Superkilen, the celebrated public park that cuts 750 metres through Outer Norrebro in Copenhagen. Bounded by Mimersgade, Midgardsgade and Slejpnersgade, the black square was conceived as the neighbourhood's "urban living room": the classic meeting square of the three-part park, furnished with barbecue g.....

The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and the rest of the international musical canon have their Danish home in a lavish 1908 playhouse tucked into a courtyard off Gammel Kongevej. Det Ny Teater ("the New Theatre") opened on 19 September 1908 with a Napoleon comedy whose cast included the soon-to-be silent film icon Asta Nielsen and Poul Reumert; the building was drawn by architects L.P. Gudme and Ludvig Andersen, a collaboration so fraught it ended in arbitration and Andersen's expulsion fro.....