the view from Dantes Plads to Christiansborg above and the plan fot an extension of the city drawn by Conrad Seidelin in 1857 below with a long double avenue or ride to the corner of a large new garden that appears to have been designed for irregular paths through densely planted trees with a terrace out to the bay and an avenue of trees returning along the shore to Langebro that then crossed to Christianshavn from the end of what is now Vester Voldgade.

Note: the plan shows the original railway station, built in 1847, with the railway line along what is now Sønder Boulevard, and what might have been a proposal for a new U-shaped station on Vester Voldgade.

Standing on Dantes Plads - just out from Holckenhus - the buildings across the north side of the square - it becomes obvious that there is a straight view down the street called Ny Vestergade to Christiansborg on its central east/west axis, across the Marble Bridge, and through the outer stable court to the great tower over the east entrance.

In the other direction, west from Dantes Plads, this line cuts close to the corner of Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek but continues as far as the side entrance to Øksnehallen - the meat market - even following across the bridge taking Tietgensgade over the main railway lines at the south end of the platforms of the central station.

Copenhagen is not a city of long straight roads let alone grand avenues and bombastic planning so the line and the length of this axis - 1,300 metres in all - is curious.

Although the central axis through the courtyards of Christiansborg and out over Marmorbroen / the Marble Bridge was created in the early 18th century - when the castle was rebuilt - the axis on further to the west was not a viable proposition then as it was blocked by the high bank of the defences on the outer side of what is now Vester Voldgade, and, beyond the defences, the sea of the bay to the south west cut in much closer than it does now so the sight line from the Marble Bridge - the west exit from the palace - would have looked along the beach. It might have been possible that this had been planned as a grand route from Christiansborg to the palace at Frederiksberg but that would have needed a new gateway through the defensive bank and, in any case, the alignment is wrong.

What seems more plausible is that this axis as far as the meat market has its origin in a scheme for extending the city that was proposed by the Danish architect Conrad Seidelin in the 1850s in anticipation that the old defences of the city would be dismantled.

In the end, by the time the high banks of the defences were taken down and the ditches filled in, the ownership of much of the land around the city had changed hands and some new streets had already been laid out so little of the plan by Seidelin was realised.

Here, west of the old city, he had proposed a long tree-lined avenue or boulevard on the central axis of Christiansborg that created a ride or esplanade out from the Marble Bridge to a large informal garden or park on the line of the lakes. This seems to have been envisaged as a royal garden comparable to the Queen's gardens that had been laid out to the north of the city at Sophie Amalienborg in the second half of the 17th century. Seidelin also proposed an avenue or ride returning along the harbour.

The axis, from Christiansborg to the meat market, seems to have survived by default despite the fact that the avenue and new gardens became less and less likely as the decades passed.

the Seidelin plan