Copenhagen...is...OLD!!

I had a field study yesterday for my History and Contemporary Urban Issues in Copenhagen class yesterday, and it was so cool!

First off, I didn't really fathom how much history is in the city before but really, they have buildings that are still used today that are older than our nation's government dating back to the 1600s.

My professor was able to pull some strings and get us a tour of one of the Royal family's residences (they have 4 surrounding a plaza with a statue of Frederick IV in the middle); we took a tour of the one where the queen hosts parties, dinners, and teas. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring a camera in :( so I'll do my best to describe things to you.

We entered and went up a large staircase that spiraled around (where the guide urged us to use the railing because that was the only thing we could touch in the house lol) then worked our way through about 7 rooms, each with a larger scale of grandeur with different names like 'The Art Room' and 'The Velvet Room'. The ceilings started out at roughly 14 feet high and grew taller as we entered each room, and they all had decorative moldings on them eventually becoming gilded with gold in the Ball room. There were two main emphasizes when restoring this building that dates back to the early 1700s: #1. To keep all the same fabrics and weaving as the original owner (I think it was Christian IV...one of the Christian's anyways) and #2. To add to the grand scale little by little with each room you enter to build up the excitement until you get to the pinnacle (the Ball room). So, we saw original weavings that were over 250 years old and in perfect condition. There was one room (The Velvet Room) where the original tapestries weren't able to be used so the Queen contacted the original company in China that produced the fabric all those years ago and had them weave 120 meters of new tapestry. It was all hand-woven and in order to keep the pattern exactly the same, all 120 meters were done by one lady. It took 10 years for the Queen to receive the finished weaving. Talk about being patient!


Then, we walked over to the original citadel of the city. The citadel is the place where, if Copenhagen was attacked, the battle would be led to. It's in the shape of a 5-pointed star with the original moats still around part of it and ditches and all these other technical terms we learned in my class to help protect the city in the 1600s. It's now a park and I've actually been there before, that's where the little mermaid is located! haha Here's an aerial picture to show how it looks:



And some of my own pictures: The Yellow houses are some of the early homes that families rented, usually sailors and their families were in them due to how close they were to the water front. One family would live in a section as little as from the edge of the building to the green door.