Copenhagen audio guide: the stories of its sights

In 1964, the Little Mermaid of Copenhagen lost her head.

Someone sawed it off, and it was never found. This is the bronze figure on the Langelinie waterfront promenade, known in Danish as Den lille Havfrue. She stands just 125 centimetres tall, which makes her one of the smallest landmarks in the world. She was put in place on 23 August 1913, and she illustrates a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. So who took her head? Neither the head nor the culprit was ever found.

The artist Jørgen Nash claimed he knew the guilty person, but he refused to say who it was. Then, in 1997, Nash published his memoirs. In them he wrote that he had thrown the severed head into a lake called Utterslev Mose. Today she is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Denmark. She sits on a rock by the water along the promenade, and she welcomes visitors to Copenhagen's harbour.

Hans Christian Andersen didn't live at Nyhavn once.

He lived there three times, and the last time he never left. Nyhavn is a 17th-century harbour canal and entertainment district in Copenhagen. The canal runs from the square called Kongens Nytorv down to the harbour. It was here that Andersen wrote several of his fairy tales, among them The Princess and the Pea. Imagine him at his desk, a few steps from the water, putting a princess and a single pea onto the page.

His final home at Nyhavn was number 18, on the shady side of the canal. He lived there until his death in 1875. Today a memorial plaque hangs on one of the houses where he lived. The sunny north side is now lined with cafés and restaurants. In summer, white parasols turn the street into a town of tents. And from the quay, canal boats set off on tours through the harbour and its many waterways.

On the night of 11 February 1659, Swedish soldiers crept towards Copenhagen in white cloaks, so they would vanish into the snow.

Their plan was to storm the city, on the very ground where Tivoli Gardens stands today. Tivoli is an amusement park in the heart of Copenhagen, close to the central station and the shopping street Strøget. Georg Carstensen founded it in 1843. It is the second oldest amusement park in the world, and the most visited tourist attraction in Denmark. But back to that winter night. The people of Copenhagen were ready.

They met the attackers with showers of stones and heavy beams. They poured down boiling water and burning tar. By dawn, the Danes had lost only 12 men. The Swedes had lost about 600. The people of Copenhagen had a joke about those white cloaks. How good of the Swedes, they said, to bring their own shrouds from home. It was even said that the skeletons of fallen Swedes still lie in the ground there.

Today, the park is full of music. The Tivoli Guard, boys between 9 and 16, march through the gardens playing their instruments. And from May to September, every Saturday ends with fireworks.

Above the entrance to the Danish parliament at Christiansborg Palace, four granite giants carry a balcony on their shoulders.

Locals call this doorway the "Gate of Pain". The reason is their faces. When the figures were unveiled, their desperate stone expressions caused such horror that money was collected to have them chopped away. It never happened. They still stand there, and people have given them names: Earache, Headache, Stomach Ache and Toothache. Christiansborg lies on the islet of Slotsholmen, in the heart of Copenhagen.

It houses the Danish parliament, the Supreme Court and the Prime Minister's Office. The palace you find today is the third one on this spot. The earlier two burned down, and parts of all three buildings are still woven into the present one. The site has a long past. Bishop Absalon built the first castle here in 1167. In 1368 the Hanseatic towns captured it, and they tore it down the following year.

Since the 15th century, the power of the Danish state has been based on this very ground.