Copenhagen City Hall
Grand National Romantic city hall with a soaring tower and a world-famous astronomical clock inside.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Copenhagen City Hall centers on a strange machine hidden behind glass inside it: the astronomical world clock built by Jens Olsen, a locksmith turned watchmaker who was inspired by Strasbourg Cathedral's clock as a young man and spent decades working out its calculations alone. You'll hear how construction finally began in 1943 under German occupation, using brass melted down from Danish households' kitchenware, and how Olsen did not live to see it switched on. It follows the project through to the day his family and a king pressed the button together, and the twelve separate movements that keep it running today.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Rådhuspladsen
Grand civic square before a National Romantic town hall, framed by a soaring clock tower and dragon fountain.
The Christiansborg's Tower
Granite-clad neobaroque tower topping a thrice-rebuilt palace, its viewing deck free and open above the city.
The Hermitage Palace
Baroque hunting lodge with a vanished mechanical dining table that once rose through the floor by itself.
The Round Tower
Spiral cobblestone ramp winding seven and a half times up a seventeenth-century tower to Europe's oldest working observatory.
Grundtvigs Kirke
Expressionist brick church with an organ-pipe facade rising in stepped gables above a hilltop parish.
Planetarium | Denmark
Tilted-dome planetarium in a sloping cylindrical building beside a city lake, hosting daily immersive space shows.