Only two days after our first trip to the center of Copenhagen, Christina and I continued our sightseeing tour. This time some friends joined us: Łukasz, Tomasz, Gosia and Ralph from Poland and Daniel from Austria.
We met at the city hall square and walked only a few minutes to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. This art museum houses the personal collection of one of the Carlsberg offsprings. Carlsberg is the hugest brewery in Denmark and of course also very well known internationally. Anyway, the museum is mostly about ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian antiquities but also houses a series of famous paintings by artists such as Monet, Degasse or van Gogh.
Fortunately for us a lot of museums in Copenhagen don’t charge you any admission on certain days and so we did not have to pay to enter the Glyptotek on Sunday. Unfortunately the section with the paintings is closed when there is free admission so the sculptures and antiquities were the only thing we could have a look at. Personally I liked the Egyptian things best: mummies, sarcophagi and the likes. The Roman and Greek collections mostly consisted of busts (heads) of people of different eras. Maybe interesting for historians but for me it got boring after the 20th head or so. And there were much much more than just 20. But since it was free I should maybe not complain. At least it was some culture…

After we lost Daniel in the museum the rest of us moved on. Our next target was the Round Tower (Rundetårn). But it was still a bit to walk there and we took a little detour to watch other things.
First we came by Christiansborg Palace, the place were Denmark’s judicial, executive and legislative powers are housed. This is only the case here in Denmark so it’s kind of unique.
Next on our walk was the Danish Royal Library with its very nice gardens. Adjacent to the gardens is the old library building which houses still some books and also the Jewish Museum in Copenhagen. Next to the building a statue of the famous Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard sits on a high pedestal and waits for the time to pass by. When stepping out of the gardens one can see the “Black Diamond” - the new building of the Danish Royal Library built in 1999.
After leaving the library we next passed the former stock exchange building, also known as Børsen. This building has a very famous tower that shows four dragon tails winded up in each other. Besides that the building is in very bad shape. The traffic that passes it each day has clearly left its marks: All the walls are just black and so the overall impression is not a very nice one.

Then we finally arrived at Rundetårn. The tower does not look very special from the outside (it’s not even that high) but the surprise waits inside. There are no steps. Instead a circular ramp leads straight to the top. Only the last few meters are actually steps which lead to a viewing platform. There is also a planetarium on the top which is opened for visitors during the night. While on top of the tower we enjoyed a nice overview of Copenhagen. On our way down from the tower we checked out the outhouse that is built in on the side of the tower. They even show a detailed description, where and how the drainage is built in the walls. Important information for sure!
On our way home we wanted to check out the botanical gardens which unfortunately had already closed. Maybe another time. This concluded our second sightseeing day. I’ve put some pictures of it into the gallery. Enjoy.
Sunday, 17th September 2006, 23:35:29 Posted by GangMan to
Denmark