Copenhagen (København) is Scandinavia's most vibrant and affordable capital, and one of Europe's most user-friendly cities. Small and welcoming, it's a place where people rather than cars set the pace, as evidenced by the multitude of pavement cafés and the number of thoroughfares that have been given over to pedestrians and bicycles. Amenable and relaxed, it also offers a range of entertainment which belies its relatively modest size: at night there are plenty of cosy bars and an intimate club and live-music network that could hardly be bettered, while in summer, especially, there's a varied range of entertainment as the city's population takes to the streets. This is not to mention a beckoning range of cultural attractions, including major national museums, a selection of magical art galleries, a healthy assortment of performing arts events and one of Europe's most interesting film scenes.
Physically, much of Copenhagen dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a cultured ensemble of handsome renaissance palaces, parks and merchant houses laid out around the waterways and canals that give the city, in places, a pronounced Dutch flavour. Successive Danish monarchs left their mark on the place, in particular Christian IV, creator of many of the city's most striking landmarks - including Rosenborg Slot and the districts of Nyboder and Christianshavn - and Frederik III, who graced the city with the palaces of Amalienborg and the grandiose Marmorkirke church, along with the elegant royal quarter of Frederikstad in which they are located. These landmarks remain the highest points in a refreshingly low and undeveloped skyline which continues to measure things on an emphatically human scale.
Historically, Copenhagen owes its existence to its position on the narrow Øresund strait separating Denmark from Sweden and commanding the entrance to the Baltic - one of the great trading routes of medieval Europe and now the site of the region's grandest engineering project, the massive Øresund Bridge. It's this location, poised on the dividing line between Europe and Scandinavia, that continues to give Copenhagen its distinctive character. Compared to the relatively staid capitals further north, Copenhagen has a decidedly European flavour, from the innocent hedonism of the famous Tivoli gardens to the sleazy goings-on around Vesterbro's red-light district. It's no surprise that the city's most famous export is a beer, Carlsberg, and the freedom with which it flows in the city's thousands of bars is in stark contrast to the puritanical licensing laws found elsewhere in Scandinavia - a fact attested to by the thousands of thirsty Swedes who descend on the city each year. Yet Copenhagen is also a flagship example of the Scandinavian commitment to liberal social values, as exemplified by its laid-back attitudes to everything from gay marriages to toplessness and pornography, and is also home to the unique "Free City" of Christiania, whose drop-out community is one of Europe's most intriguing social experiments.
