Magstræde

This guide to Magstræde in Copenhagen centers on the fire of October 1728, which burned through nearly half the old city and left the university library and thousands of manuscripts in ashes. You'll hear how one crooked house on the lane, already decades old, survived both that fire and a second blaze in 1795, and how a court carpenter named Diderich Schäffer later rebuilt nearby with an architect whose rococo woodwork now sits in Denmark's National Museum. Look at the leaning facades and timber walls as you walk the cobblestones.