As Nella and I boarded the bus that would take us to the Our Savior Church in Christianshavn, we were unaware that our daughter Connie and her Dutch friend Niels had already formulated and acted on the same idea. You may remember from the close of the Tivoli Gardens page that they had found free bikes and set off to explore the city on their own.

In 2011 the free bikes of Copenhagen could be found hooked up to a number of stations scattered around the city.

Insertion into a small box on the handlebars of a 20 krone coin (about $3.80 US at the time) would unhook a bike for unlimited use by its liberator. On return and reattachment of the bike to one of the stations, the coin was returned, resulting in no cost to the user. Besides the coin box, the bikes sported a few other interesting features. Rather than exposed spokes on the wheels, a solid surface on which advertising could be sold was evident. On the handlebars, a laminated map of central Copenhagen was mounted. And, less obvious, the bikes were specially engineered to contain no parts that were exchangeable with those of privately-owned bicycles, to prevent people from using them as a cheap source of parts. The free bike program was introduced in 1995, primarily as a means of reducing incidences of bicycle theft, which were a big problem at the time. Copenhagen was the first city in Europe to introduce a bike program of this scale, and the idea has since been copied in many other European cities (including others in Denmark). Unfortunately, the Copenhagen program was apparently discontinued in 2012, due to the expiration of a contract and the failure of a new program to materialize.

But on this summer day in 2011, Connie and Niels were joyfully pedaling around, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. (Actually, Connie wasn’t that joyful at times, as the bikes were apparently engineered for people much taller than her, making stops and restarts problematic, for both her and others on the bike paths.)

The distinctive and widely visible spire of the Our Savior Church beckoned to them, and they found themselves irresistibly drawn to it, via the bridge to Christianshavn.

The Our Savior Church was completed in 1695, but the added spire was not finished until 1752. The spire’s architect was a man named Lauritz de Thurah, who had spent some time in Rome and was influenced by the similarly-configured spire of the Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza church found there. The Our Savior Church somehow survived the British bombardment of the city in 1807, and for nearly a century was the tallest building in the city, at 295 feet. During World War II, the Danish resistance used the tower to conceal weapons and explosives, which the occupying Germans seem never to have figured out. The church has undergone restoration more than once, with the most recent work taking place in the 1990’s. For our visit, it looked to be in pretty good shape.

Connie and Niels visited the church while Nella and I were indulging in the belongings of the royal family at Rosenborg, but except for timing (and the fact that Nella and I weren’t able to visit the church itself, as it had closed for the day), our visits were quite similar. For this reason, I’ve smooshed the visits together into what may seem like a single visit. Don’t be deceived, if this is important to you.

There is a fee for ascending the spire of the Our Savior Church (currently 40 krones, but you may want to verify with the church’s website). There are 400 steps from the ground to the top, of which the first 250 are indoors. The upper 150 spiral around the outside of the spire, in a counter-clockwise direction. As the upper stairway gets higher, it also gets narrower, and it’s a tight fit for more than one person to stand on the top step at the same time.



While the church is no longer the tallest building in the city, the view remains impressive. It helps that it’s easy to see in all directions, and that there are no other similarly tall buildings in Christianshavn to block the view. Here’s some of what we were able to see, with descriptions of some highlights:


One of the structures visible from the spire is the Øresundsbroen, a bridge that was built to connect Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmö across the Øresund Strait. From the air the bridge appears to leave Malmö and arrive at a small island in the middle of the strait, where it ends. This island is an artificial island called Peberholm (or “Pepper Islet”, named to complement a nearby natural island, called Saltholm), and at this point the bridge becomes a tunnel which dives beneath the water to resurface in Denmark, near Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport. The bridge portion of this link is five miles long, while the tunnel is 2.5 miles in length. Construction began in 1995, and was completed in 1999, opening for business the following year. The link was built to carry both automobile and rail traffic. The central span of the bridge portion was designed to allow for passage of large ships, but in practice they generally just go the other way, passing over the tunnel.

Also visible from Our Savior Church is a grouping of 20 offshore wind turbines, known as the Middelgrunden wind farm. This was the world’s largest offshore wind farm when it opened in the year 2000. It supplies about 4% of Copenhagen’s electrical needs.






After we finished gazing at the landscape (and seascape), we spiraled back down and left the tower, at which point our day’s activities again diverged from those of Connie and Niels. Connie and Niels returned to the bikes they’d parked nearby (they weren’t able to find a nearby return station) and found that someone had somehow pried their way into the coin boxes and made off with their krones. Nevertheless, they resumed their no-longer-free bike ride and visited some more points of interest.

Nella and I, on the other hand, just got back on the bus (after looking at a bakery near the bus stop) and returned to the hotel.

It was getting late, and we had packing to do, as we were leaving the city the next day. Connie and Niels eventually reappeared, and we went out in search of dinner. Niels talked to one of the student-age locals and got a recommendation for a Middle Eastern take-out place. We picked up some food and walked down to a small park to eat it.

We then returned to the hotel, where Connie and Niels said their good-byes and Niels departed, presumably to return across the Øresundsbroen to his school in Sweden.

After getting a good night’s sleep, we checked out and dragged our luggage back up to the train station, where we caught a train back to the airport. We had a plane to catch, this one destined for our next destination – Berlin, Germany.