Copenhagen - Langelinie Park

Date of visit: 15th October 2015

Words are not enough to express our happiness when we walked towards the Langelinie Park. A colorful autumn leaves has filled the view from far distance, with so much glory and we could not contain our excitement when lake was what we first encountered. We sat to enjoy the view at the bench, snapped countless photo and Anne has changed her Facebook profile photo that night as soon as we got back to the hotel. The view and its ambiance suited everything that we encountered and achieved that day.

Anne's present Facebook profile photo

The Langelinie Park stretches from Esplanaden Street in the south to Langelinie Marina and the base of the Langelinie Pier in the north. We were walking from Bredgade Street from the Marble Church until we saw a T-junction at the end of the road. Formally, it includes Kastellet (the best preserved fortresses) although this site is generally referred to under its own name. The park contains numerous monuments, buildings, a marina, statues and a playground. Among these are the St Alban Church, Gefion Fountain, the Ivar Huitfeldt Column and The Little Mermaid.

Langelinie, means “Long Line” is a pier, promenade and park in central Copenhagen, Denmark, and home of the statue of The Little Mermaid. The area has for centuries been a popular destination for excursions and strolls in Copenhagen. Most cruise ships arriving in Copenhagen also berth at Langelinie Pier.

Kastellet

The name Langelinie goes back to the middle of the 17th century where it referred to an idyllic path along the Oresund coast that rounded the citadel Kastellet and continued towards a lime kiln north of the city. For a long time, the stretch was a military area where civilians were not granted unrestricted access. Under a general order from 1819, soldiers were required to "throw water in the head and on the breast and to cool their feet in the water".

Eventually a beach promenade and a park for the Bourgeoisie were made but with access only on the payment of a toll to keep the more common people out. Not until a public uprising in 1848 did the area become open to everybody.

The expansion of the city and the increasing industrialization soon made it clear that the city's harbor was becoming too small and in the same time old plans to create a free port were revived. In a plan from 1862 it was decided to dig out the area to allow access for the largest ocean-going vessels and use the materials removed for landfills along the coast. A suggestion to make all of Amager into a duty-free zone was abolished and instead it was decided to create a free port in the area north of Kastellet at the site of the Langelinie promenade. 

The beginning of the work was prompted by Germany's construction of the Kiel Canal that was started off in 1887 which actually threatened Copenhagen's position. In 1894 the work was completed and Copenhagen had got an entirely new harbor front. The old beach promenade with Bourgeois mansions had turned into a heavily traffic street Strandboullevarden located several hundred meters inland and the beach where the soldiers had been required to cool their feet had turned into harbor basins. Langelinie became now a pier on the other side of that harbor basin.