Bakken

This guide to Bakken, Copenhagen's forest amusement park, opens in 1583 with Kirsten Piil discovering a spring rumored to heal the sick, and the fortune tellers, fire eaters and vendors who followed the crowds into the king's private hunting grounds. It traces two centuries of Danish kings trying to shut the gate on those crowds, until Frederik the Fifth finally gave up in 1756. A white-faced clown named Pjerrot still works this hillside, a tradition older than most nations.