Copenhagen
Denmark's capital, a waterfront city of bicycles and design
Copenhagen has made itself a model of how a modern city might live. Bicycles outnumber cars on its harbor bridges, the brightly painted houses of the Nyhavn quayside reflect in the water, and clean, restrained Danish design shapes everything from the chairs to the skyline. The capital of Denmark, spread across the islands of Zealand and Amager where the Baltic meets the Øresund strait, is a compact, prosperous, famously contented city of around 1.4 million, linked by a soaring bridge to neighboring Sweden.
The city sits at the eastern edge of Zealand and the northern tip of Amager, on the Øresund strait that separates Denmark from Sweden, on flat, low-lying terrain barely above sea level — its highest natural points only a few metres up. Canals and a working harbor thread through the center, and reclaimed land and artificial islands have shaped the modern waterfront. A temperate maritime climate brings cool summers, mild winters, and steady wind, and the flatness has helped make Copenhagen one of the world's great cycling cities.
Copenhagen grew from a Viking-era fishing village and was fortified in the twelfth century by Bishop Absalon — the name means merchants' harbor — before becoming the capital of Denmark in the fifteenth century. It flourished as a royal and trading city, weathered fires, plagues, and British bombardment, and reinvented itself in the modern era as a hub of design, cuisine, and sustainable urban living. Today it is Denmark's capital and largest city and a global byword for liveability.