Store Bededag - Great Prayer Day in Copenhagen

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Tomorrow is the fourth Friday after Easter so that means it is Store Bededag or Great Prayer Day in Denmark.

Great Prayer Day fascinates me because it seems to show just how practical Danes are and even when it comes down to organising religious festivals.

By the late 17th century it seems that there was a problem because people were marking different saint days and choosing different saints to celebrate. Not quite a day off work for someone somewhere but in 1686, Christian V rolled together all the days for celebrating minor saints through the Spring into one day off and decreed that, thenceforth, there would be just a single holiday .... Great Prayer Day.

Then, last year, the Danish government down graded it as a public holiday so tomorrow, for the first year since 1686, Danes will not take the day off from work or, rather, not take the day off and still be paid.

The reason? The state has to pay for increased expenditure on defence and, apparently, everyone working through what should otherwise have been a public holiday helps.

With many events through the year in Denmark, there are distinct foods linked to specific celebrations …. fastelavnsboller for Lent or goose for Mortenaften - the feast of Saint Martin in November - or the special beer on the first Friday in November for julebrygsdag or Christmas Brew Day. For Great Prayer Day it's Hveder .... wheat buns flavoured with cardamom.

The logic is impeccable. Because it was a religious festival, bakers could not work on the Friday, so they baked these yeast buns on Thursday so citizens had bread for the holiday.

The buns are light and are baked in trays and dough, formed into small balls, is set out in the tray in lines with regular spaces between. As they rise, they come up against the adjoining dough to form almost-square buns with a domed top. Edges, where they touch the next bun, remain soft while the tops brown in the oven.

Inevitably, these soft, light, rolls, with a delicate hint of cardamom, rarely last until Friday. The normal way is to eat them warm, pulled apart and spread with butter.

By tradition, church bells are rung on Thursday evening to mark the start of the religious holiday on Friday and, in Copenhagen, there is a centuries-old habit for citizens, on Thursday evening, to walk the ramparts - the high banks of the city defences - or families walk around the rampart of Katellet - the fortress at the north end of the inner city - with views from there across the city and across the harbour and the sound.

When I was at school, we had to write reviews or criticisms of books and music and works of art and the one word that was always scrubbed out with red ink, when these efforts were marked, was the word nice. I remembered that this afternoon when I walked across to buy wheat buns and I realised just how "nice" these Danish traditions are. Maybe I'm just getting old in a bad World but these days I'm really happy when anything is nice.

Hveder - wheat buns bought this afternoon from the local baker

 

‘On Copenhagen’s Vold the evening before Great Prayer Day’
painted by Andreas Herman Hunæus in 1862
Statens Museum for Kunst

 

walking on the ramparts of Kastellet

Børsen update - Thursday evening 18 April 2024

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Politiken has just announced that the main gable wall of the stock exchange building that faces towards Christiansborg Slotsplads, and the wall and ornate gables along the street - along Børsgade - collapsed late this afternoon.

Fire services have been monitoring the building throughout the day to ensure that fire could not break out again in the smouldering ruin. Police have reported that no one was injured when the outer walls collapsed.

This is, without any doubt, a tragedy.

Built for Christian IV in the early 17th century, Børsen was one of the most important historic buildings in the city from that period and only Rundetaarn and the Trinitatis Kirke and the palace of Rosenborg and it's gardens are of comparable architectural status and importance.

Børsen had, and hopefully still has, a significant place in the history of the city and of the country as a monument to and as evidence for 400 years of Danish trade and Danish history.

Investigations are ongoing to determine how and when and where the fire started but there has to be a major and formal assessment of how recent restoration work was planned and organised.

The whole building was encased in scaffolding and sheeting as external brickwork was being replaced - to make good inappropriate restoration undertaken in the late 19th century - but also, and probably much more significant, copper covering the roof was being replaced.

 
 
 

Børsen .... a dramatic fire is burning in the centre of Copenhagen

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I heard the sound from the sirens of fire engines as I was eating breakfast but my apartment looks away from the centre so it was only after looking at the rolling news service on the Politiken site that I realised where the fire was and went up onto the roof of my apartment building. From there the extent of the fire was obvious with dense black smoke billowing from the roof of Børsen.

The fire started around 7.30 and the iconic Dragon Spire, at the centre of the building, collapsed into the street about an hour later. Even at 10.00 the fire was said by emergency services to be still out of control.

Clearly, one significant problem was that the whole building has been enveloped in scaffolding. This had sturdy hoardings around the lower levels and heavy plastic sheeting above with a temporary roof over the whole building for a major programme of work that started in 2022 to restore the exterior brickwork and renew the copper roof.

It seems as if the fire services had restricted access where they would normally use hoses to douse the flames from above to control the spread of such a major fire.

Bricklayers and stone masons were working at roof level when the fire started. It is far too early to determine the cause of the fire. All the workers escaped as the fire took hold.

The most recent report at midday is that the fire is on all floors and that the most serious damage is in the half of the building between the spire and the great entrance that faces towards Christiansborg.

Much of the roof and presumably hefty timbers of the floor structures have gone. Now, the hope is that the external walls and the ornate brick and stone gables can be saved.

In the first stages of the fire it was possible to rescue some of the major works of art in the building including Fra Københavns Børs … a huge painting from the late 19th century of traders in the stock exchange by P S Kroyer.

Construction work started on Børsen in 1619 and this is one of the great buildings for Christian IV. It was built as an exchange or bourse and is not only one of the most important and most distinctive of the major historic buildings in Copenhagen but it is also the symbol of 400 years of trade and commerce in the city.

Børsen before scaffolding was erected for the current restoration work
the Dragon Spire collapsed into the street
about an hour after the fire started

Børsen - the borse or great exchange - built for Christian IV in the 1620s.
beyond is Christiansborg - the building of the Danish Parliament

 

update at 21.30 on 16 April

Although the fire is now under control, reports from the fire service earlier this evening suggest that parts of the building are still burning. Fire crews will be there through the night.

Half of Børsen is now a shell with no roof and, presumably, much of the structure of the floors below the roof - massive beams and joists - has gone. Those beams across the building for each floor and beams for the roof will have been built into the structure as the building went up so if they have collapsed that will have undermined the structural integrity of the building and removed what essentially stops the outer walls falling in or collapsing out.

Intense heat from the flames and then the vast amounts of water from hoses that drenched the walls will also have damaged the brickwork and the mortar so, again, collapse of what survives is still a very real problem.

Newspaper reports earlier in the day suggest that what have been described as up to 40 “large containers” will be brought to the site as soon as it is safe and these should provide temporary support.

Scaffolding across the entrance front, that was there for the restoration work, means that it is impossible to see what damage there is to the main end gable with it’s ornate and sophisticated design of stone columns and caryatids. It is one of the finest pieces of architectural design and craftsmanship from the early 17th-century in Denmark and it has to be hoped that it can be saved.

Such catastrophic damage from the fire will hit the people of the city hard …. there was film on the TV news of people in tears as they stood and watched this much-loved and much admired building burn. Even if is at an almost subliminal level, the building is very much at the heart of the city. Many of us walk or drive past every day and when the building has been open for Kultur Natten - the Night of Culture - in October, some of the longest queues are here with people waiting to see around the interior.

I was there yesterday. I got off the bus at the Børsen stop and then spent the afternoon walking around Christiansborg to look at and photograph the work that has just started in the courtyard in front of the main entrance into parliament. I checked quickly to see if any of the scaffolding around the exchange had been removed because I wanted photographs of the new brickwork. Now, who knows what will be seen as debris is removed and new scaffolding is built to support what has survived.

 

just how much of this amazing architecture survives?

 

celebrating the 90th anniversary of S-tog

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Journeys today on suburban trains through and around Copenhagen will be free to mark the 90th anniversary of S-tog, the S-train system that serves the city and its suburbs and outer towns.

The first train line in Denmark, from Roskilde to what is now the central station in Copenhagen, opened in 1847 and then, through the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, a network of train tracks were constructed to run around and across the city.

In 1926 a commission was set up to look at electrification of the train service. They presented their report in 1929 and the first sections, with electric trains running from Klampenborg to Hellerup and from from Vanløse to Frederiksberg, opened on 3 April 1934.

S-tog now has 170 kilometres (110 miles) of track and with 87 S-train stations … with 104 electric trains with eight cars and 31 trains with four cars … S-trains and the metro system together carry around half a million passengers a day.

To the north of the city centre there are S-tog lines out to Farum, Hillerød and Klampenborg with lines out to Køge to the south, to Høje Taastrup to the west, and out to Frederikssund to the north west of the city. These lines meet and cross through the central station that is still the main traffic hub with interchanges to regional and international trains but there is also an outer S-tog service that runs in a wide arc across the west and north parts of the city from what is now called København Syd (formerly Ny Ellebjerg) to Hellerup and that crosses and links all the radial lines.

From the start, S-tog trains were promoted as not just a transport system for workers coming into the city in the morning and heading back home in the evening but also as a reliable and cheap way for citizens to get out into the countryside or out to beaches and the coast.

In 1947 this radial system of train lines became the framework for a crucial new planning proposal for Copenhagen that was to control urban development and prevent sprawl. Stations along the lines were to be nodes for commercial development or were to serve new areas of housing. It was called the Finger Plan as on maps - or at least on schematic maps - it looked like a hand spread out with the old centre of the city as the palm and new development along the fingers - each with an S-tog line - and with green spaces between the fingers that were, where possible, protected from development.

S trains today at the station at Østerport

PLANETARY BOUNDARIES - rethinking Architecture and Design

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This week is your last opportunity to see this important exhibition because Planetary Boundaries at the Royal Danish Academy on Holmen will close on Friday 5 April 2024.

The concept of Planetary Boundaries is a method for assessing the environmental state of our planet within nine areas that regulate the Earth's stability and balance. Humans have been successful because, over thousands of years, we have adapted to survive in a remarkable range of habitats from frozen tundra to parched landscapes with barely any vegetation and we have done that through the ways we have learned to exploit a huge range of natural resources. However, there are limits to those resources and limits to how much we can pollute the land, and the water and the atmosphere of Earth with waste before that has a serious impact. Mining, the generation of power and the consequent production of waste from industrial processes are all pushing those boundaries close to and, in many environments, way beyond those limits.

Shown here, is work from 25 research protects, that have looked at new materials or at new approaches to design and manufacturing and at changes in our building methods and planning policies that could control our demands for energy and reduce global emissions of CO2 and pollutants from mining extraction and from large-scale agricultural and industrial processes ... processes that have had such a detrimental impact on our rivers and seas and our atmosphere.

Manufacturing is responsible for over 50% of global energy usage and is responsible for 20% of global CO2 emissions.

A UN report from 2022 showed that construction work is now responsible for 34% of global energy demands and 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

So now, as the impact of climate change is becoming a reality, if there are not major changes to what we build and how we build, current predictions for the release of CO2 indicate that emissions from the production of building materials alone are set to double by 2060.

We have to to be rational and look at the materials we use and change how we use materials in building construction and in manufacturing.

Some of the new materials shown in the exhibition - such as fungi - or suggestions about how to use raw materials more efficiently or ideas about how to reuse salvaged materials have been proposed before but here there is a clear move on from theory to practical applications that have been or are being tested at scale.

For policy makers - now focused on making changes before we reach irreversible tipping points in global warming - these ideas may well be obvious and, for them, it is about when and how these changes are implemented but they will only be successful if a large number of people - the customers who are buying and using the products and the citizens who are living in and working in what could be very different forms of building - understand the reasons and are on board with those changes.

One project in the exhibition has looked at experiments in communal living with reduced personal space but increased shared space for shared facilities in housing and another project looks at increasing the density of housing in the suburbs of Copenhagen by building new houses on back plots and between existing buildings but such major change can only proceed with wide-spread consent.

The exhibition presents what are still options so the next stage should be broader and informed debate about how we use materials; about what we manufacture and how and about how we build and what we build in our cities in the future.

PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler
for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering
Danneskiold-Samsøe Allé, 1435 København K
21 Sep 2023 - 5 Apr 2024 

Six of the projects will be shown at Form, the design center in Malmö. 

PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
Form Design Center
Lilla torg 9, Malmö, Sweden
13 April - 2 June 2024

a "dark store" in Copenhagen has to close

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A grocery store on the south side of Holmbladsgade - on the corner of Geislersgade - has been ordered to close by the city council.

It's a large retail space across the ground floor of a relatively new apartment building and it has been open since December 2021.

Although, looking in from the pavement, this appears to be a fairly standard supermarket but there are no tills or check.out counters. This is not a traditional retail space but a Wolt grocery store so the problem for the city council is that the shop is not open to the public and is, to all intents and purposes, a warehouse where groceries, ordered on line through the Wolt App, are taken from the shelves and packed by warehouse staff and then collected and delivered to customers by bike riders.

It does not comply with the local plan for this part of Amager -designated as residential with appropriate retail - and there have also been complaints from nearby residents about noise and specifically about loud mopeds some of the riders use to deliver groceries.

From what I have seen, fast electric trikes used by some of the riders are much more dangerous. Recently, I heard some choice Danish words and even saw a fist raised in Christiania as a delivery driver from Wolt, riding on a wide electric trike with hefty tyres, raced through lanes packed with pedestrians to cross over the foot bridge to Amager at a fair lick and, believe me, it takes a bit to make the laid back residents of Christiania that angry about anything.

In 2023 planners closed an other Wolt Store on Enghavevej after complaints from the local residents committee.

When notified, Wolt appealed the decision by planners to close the Holmbladsgade store and suggested that they could sell hot drinks and baked goods to customers coming in from the street but it appears that that solution has been rejected so, sometime before Easter, this particular dark store will go permanently dark.

At Wolt the delivery riders are called partners - because they are not employed directly by the company - and they claim that they can not dictate what sort of bike or moped their riders use.

The company started in Finland in 2014 but in 2022 the business was sold to the American DoorDash. Wolt came to Copenhagen in 2017 and there are now 10 Wolt stores across Denmark, in main cities, so this type of store with bike deliveries has created a new planning problem.

These stores are defined as "dark" because they are not open to customers although that is a misnomer because this store is open until late - much later than other shops along the street - and it is brightly lit which is, I presume, for the security of the young warehouse workers and the delivery riders coming and going late into the night.

 

Along with groceries, Wolt delivers meals from restaurants that have been ordered on line and the app also has flowers and sex toys so they bring to your door almost everything you could want if you are staying in for an evening.

Before writing this post, I checked out the Wolt App - I don't use delivery services - and spotted immediately a glaring irony. The delivery riders I've seen racing around the city with their distinct pale blue delivery boxes are generally fairly fit - they have to work hard and fast to earn their money - but for customers this is such an easy way to bulk load calories because you only have to walk from the sofa to the front door and back with your delivery of your large hit of calories on demand.

Dark stores have been banned in Amsterdam so presumably problems there have been enough to prompt strong action by planners.

 

Copenhagen Light Festival 2024

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Copenhagen Light Festival opened tonight and continues through until the 25 February.

There are 79 light works that have been set up in streets, squares and parks across the city and seven events that include an opening concert and a family run at night with lights. The works vary enormously in form from laser displays through floodlighting to sculptures in light and many of the installations include sound.

Details of locations and, where relevant, times are set out in the online programme but, In general, lights will be switched on at 5pm.

This year, for the first time, there will be guided walks but, if you want to explore independently, there is an app for the festival that can be downloaded and that includes an interactive map with information about each installation and about the artists.

Copenhagen Light Festival - programme

 

The Wave - Ofelia Plads

Du som er i Himlene - Højbro Plads
Vivid Verve - Jorcks Passage
PiXLEarth - Knasten, Havnegade 14
Bron, Broen, Bridge - Knippelsbro

greetings of the season

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This photograph was taken earlier in December in the courtyard of the design museum.

There was a light covering of snow in the city on Christmas Eve but by the middle of the morning the wind had swung round to come from the west and the temperature rose and what snow there was melted so, unfortunately, it’s not a white Christmas this year.

 

the season has changed and we are rushing towards Christmas

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Last weekend the clocks changed; Broens Skøjtebane - the ice rink at the Christianshavn end of the Inner Harbour Bridge (top left) - opened on Friday; Christmas markets at Højbro Plads (top right) and on Kongens Nytorv have opened and, on Kongens Nytorv, the main department store of Magasin du Nord and the Hotel Angleterre now have their Christmas lights ….. suddenly we are in the rush down to the end of the year.

Skøjtebane, Strandgade 95, 1401 København K
opened on 3 November 2023 and
remains open through to 25 February 2024

 

AKUT #5 ... CARE & REPAIR

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AKUT is an umbrella title for a series of exhibitions at the design museum that address “topics where design and designers are at the center of major societal dilemmas and challenges.”

In the past, textiles and clothing were expensive and were carefully stored and, when necessary, were repaired.

In the homes of the middle classes and the wealthy, clothes and bed linens were kept carefully in presses (large cupboards) or in a chest or a chest of drawers and seamstresses and tailors could re-hem or alter clothes if they were handed down or had to be “let out” as a child grew.

Both my grandmothers and my mother knitted and sewed and I remember through my childhood, that expensive Christmas cakes and fancy chocolates often came in tins and these were repurposed so all three women had tins with phenomenal collections of threads and yarns, patches of fabric and every sort and size of button to repair and alter our clothes. All three made their own curtains and cushion covers and no one in the family considered these tasks exceptional but as necessary skills that were common in most households.

One of the information panels in the exhibition suggests that “historically, the task of maintaining household textiles has fallen mainly to women” but my grandfather - my mother’s father - reupholstered chairs, made rag rugs, had a hefty iron cobbler’s tree on his work bench so that he could put new heals on our shoes and he had a leather hole punch so he could adjust or alter belts and straps. He was also a passable knitter as he had grown up on the east coast where men in his family - North Sea fishermen - knitted.

In the 1950s and through the 1960s and 1970s, most department stores had large haberdasheries and most towns had wool shops (for knitters) and fabric shops for dress makers and for curtains and upholstery.

Today, does anyone replace a zip or darn a sock or sew a leather patch on the arm of a jacket or a jumper? Surely now we have to repair and recycle for environmental reasons and this exhibition is a timely reminder that looks at techniques used to repair and reuse textiles.

AKUT #5 CARE & REPAIR / AKUT #5 CARE & REPAIR
Designmuseum Danmark / Design Museum Danmark
Bredgade 68, 1260 København K

from 3 November 2023 through to 8 September 2024

 
 

detail of a Danish “sampler” where a young girl practiced her skills in darning and needlework

MINDMAP #66 ... a site-specific installation by Gitte Svendsen

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An installation of works by Gitte Svendsen with heavily-tufted material and fringes in strong colours that are combined with panels of plexiglass, wood, metal and print.

GITTE SVENDSEN

MINDMAP #66
DANSKE KUNSTHÅNDVÆRKERE & DESIGNERE
(Association of Danish Craftsmen & Designers)
Officinet, Bredgade 66, 1260 Copenhagen K

28 October 2023 - 11 November 2023

Kulturnatten 2023

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Kulturnatten is a major annual event when museums, galleries, churches, major historic buildings and departments of national and city government in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg open for an evening - most from 6pm through to midnight.

There will be special exhibitions, concerts or demonstrations and, at many organisations, there are tours of areas that are rarely open to the public so this is when citizens can see what happens behind the scenes.

At many of the venues there will be stalls for street food and drink and, because Kulturnatten is always on the Friday of the mid-term school holiday, many of the events are aimed at families.

This year 230 organisations or venues across the city will be participating.

Over the years I've seen mock trials in the law courts; explored the main rooms and offices of city hall; seen the work of conservators; explored behind the stage of the national theatre; wandered through the main rooms of the Treasury and watched demonstrations of horsemanship and carriage driving at the Royal Stables.

This year I'm planning to see inside the Mast Crane at the north end of the harbour; see the great steam engines at the power station at the south end of the harbour working and possibly this will be a chance to look around the Traffic Tower where the train system for this half of the country is controlled. I'm also keen to see rope making on Nyhavn and the displays at the Ministry of Climate.

Entry to all the buildings and events is with a Culture Pass - DKK110 for adults - that can be downloaded through an app or can be bought at 711 stores throughout the city. Entry for children under the age of 12 is free.

The pass gives free use of public transport within the city from 4pm through to 4am on Saturday and includes the harbour ferries and rides on a fleet of veteran buses brought out for the evening.

Every year has a distinct graphic style for publicity and posters from previous years can be seen on an online archive that goes all the way back to the poster from the first Kulturnatten in 1993.

Kulturnatten
programme of events
posters

Stolt / Proud .... modern folk costumes designed by Nicholas Nybro

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Twenty-one “modern folk costumes” by the Danish designer Nicholas Nybro were inspired by cities and regions across Denmark to explore our relationship to clothing that “transcends geographical local disparities” to “reveal a pride in our origins and a sense of belonging.”

Stolt / Proud
Designmuseum Danmark / Design Museum Danmark
Bredgade 68, 1260 København K

from 5 October 2023 to 26 May 2024

① Stolt / Proud
② Sonderborg, Nørrebro and Aalborg
③ Christiania
④ Strynø
⑤ Tisvilde
⑥ Fanø

 

Planetary Boundaries - Rethinking Architecture and Design

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A major new exhibition has opened in the gallery of the Royal Danish Academy on Philip de Langes Allé on Holmen.

Planetary Boundaries presents here 25 research projects that have looked at new materials or at new approaches to design and manufacturing and at changes in our building methods and planning policies that could control our demands for energy and reduce global emissions of CO2 and pollutants from mining extraction and from large-scale agricultural and industrial processes ... processes that have had such a detrimental impact on our rivers and seas and our atmosphere.

note:
From 2026 the Academy will offer a postgraduate (masters) course on Planetary Boundaries that will focus on large-scale, urban development, urban spaces and landscape.

Planetary Boundaries
Det Kongelige Akademi
Philip de Langes Allé 10
1435 Copenhagen K
21 September 2023 - 7 April 2024

 
 
 

next week ......

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Next week … on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the 10th, 11th and 12th August … the annual craft market will be on Frue Plads with works from more than a hundred professional designers and makers who are members of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere … the Danish association of artisans and designers.

Frue Plads is the square alongside Vor Frue Kirke - the square alongside the cathedral in Copenhagen.

Frue Plads Marked
Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere

RESET MATERIALS towards sustainable architecture

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Construction work around the World accounts for nearly 40% of global emissions of CO2 so we have to question not only how we build but also reassess the materials we use for building in order to reduce that impact.

This exhibition shows the results of research by ten interdisciplinary teams of architects, artists and manufacturers who have looked at innovative materials for building - like mycelium - or looked at how we could use existing materials in new ways or, even, at how to bring back into use materials, like hemp or straw, that were used widely, at least in vernacular and agricultural buildings, until a century or so ago. We must even consider using ancient construction techniques so, for instance, earth and mud, dried in the sun, to build up walls, as an alternative to using energy-intensive materials like fired bricks or concrete.

 

 

RESET MATERIALS towards sustainable architecture
30 June 2023 . 28 September 2023
Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center
Refshalevej 173A
1432 København K

 
 
 

TOUR OF CPH - Sunday 2 July 2023

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On 2 July 2023 - to coincide with the opening of the world architecture congress in the city - a car-free cycle route was established around the centre of the city with a major cycle event for families - for any citizens as well as any tourists who could rent or borrow a bike - as long as they were on two or three wheels.

The ride covered about 8 kilometres in all through the streets of the old city and with twenty stopping places at key historic sites and major buildings where there were panels with QR codes for information.

The route took cyclists first from the Danish Architecture Center over Lille Langebro and along the quay, on the Amager side of the harbour, before riding through Christianshavn and then up to Holmen and close to the opera house.

Heading back along the canal past the Arsenal, they crossed back to the centre over the Inner Harbour Bridge to Nyhavn and then out towards Tolbod before heading across to the King’s Garden and then down through some of the busiest shopping streets in the city to Gammel Strand and around Frederiks kanal and so back to the Architecture Center.

There was an app for route.

All cars and all other motor vehicles were barred from the whole route with just five crossing points, with barriers and marshals, where some locals in their cars were allowed in and out but the only point where there was free and open access for vehicles to enter the central area was at Knippelsbro where vehicles could cross the bridge from Amager to the centre because bikes on the route were under the bridge on the quay.

Cyclists could join and leave the route at any point but there was an official start and finish at the Danish Architecture Centre where there was a festival area on Bryghuspladsen - in front of BLOX - with activities divided into four themes ……..

Green Everything - food, urban gardens and Hello Kitchen
Splash Splash - Green Kayak rubbish collection + fishing in the harbour
Active City - street sports, dancing and Parkour
Game’ on Move it - gaming, exercise + working out

TOUR OF CPH
Sunday 2 July 2023
12 to 15pm

I’m not sure if this event was as well as or instead of the annual Car Free Sunday.
If a date and a list of roads to be closed is published later in the summer, I will post infrmation on the blog

car free Sunday September 2021

Many of the cyclists were wearing T shirts with the motto Driving Change for Healthy Cities …. a campaign supported by Novo Nordisk that continues on from a similar cycle ride last year when the barriers for the opening section of the Tour de France last year were kept in place for a second day so that cyclists in the city could try the route

In the city, bike jams are surprisingly common.
OK …. not that surprising when you think about the number of bikes here.
But it’s usually at busy road junctions in the morning or in the evening when cyclists are commuting between home and work ….. here it was simply a hard turn to the left and then immediately a turn to the right to ride down to the canal in Christianshavn that slowed down the cyclists on the Tour.

 

UNESCO architecture

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An open-air exhibition of photographs on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen.

This is one of the events in the city to mark that, in 2023, Copenhagen is the UNESCO World Capital of of Architecture.

These are photographs, with information panels and maps, of World Heritage Sites in Denmark …… Roskilde Cathedral, Kronborg Castle, Stevns Klint, Jelling Monuments, Christiansfeld, the Wadden Sea and the Parforce hunting landscape in North Zealand.

UNESCO ARCHITECTURE
Kongens Nytorv
København K
1 July 2023 - 30 July 2023