Kongens Have

The thing that I love about Copenhagen is the abundance of parks in the middle of the city. This park is one of the nicest. It’s smacked right in the city center, a merely walking distance from Copenhagen’s busiest station Nørreport st.
You can bring your picnic blanket and some food and enjoy the sunshine and the view of the beautiful Rosenborg Castle from afar. Although it’s super cliché, it’s still one of my favourite activities in the summer.
On the winter, or simply colder weather, it’s still a nice thing to walk through the park and have the feelings that the spring is just around the corner.

Lovely park!
A real haven in the busy city. As it is fairly big you feel relaxed very quickly. I especially loved the water futures and the rose garden.

Beautiful park. Summer evenings are great people watching. Get some picnic food and drinks and pick the spot you want. There’s everything from rowdy elaborate drinking games with college kids to quiet serene areas to choose from. Best park in the city.

This maybe one of the few cases where the grounds seem more interesting than the palace it surrounds. Dont get me wrong, Rosenborg is cool in it’s own way but compared to the others in town and especially the ones north in HIllerod and such, it doesnt compare. The gardens here are supper varied. Sculpture art, large rows of trees, fields of grass. I was lucky to be here in May where it was basically perfect weather. It’s crazy how many nice public open space areas there are in CPH!

How does a beautiful public space which can be accessed and enjoyed by everyone not deserve five stars?! Perhaps because Copenhageners are spoiled by their wide selection of public gardens (featuring castles no less). Beautiful public parks that are maintained this well are not so easy to come by in other parts of the world.
Kongens Have is a formal garden surrounding the Rosenborg Palace in central Copenhagen. It doesn’t look very big — and you can walk across it in under 10 minutes — but each corner of the park has a different feel which is worth exploring.
Being a formal garden, there are lots of tree-​lined avenues and impressive lines-​of-​sight with statues or fountains at the focal point. This is not an Olmsted-​like «natural-​but-​improved» park space. This is most definitely a «I’m the King and look what I can make nature do» kind of park.
The south-​west entrance at Gothersgade and Kronprinsessegade is normally the busiest and filled with locals and tourists on sunny days. The green space here is often used for performances/​events and can get very crowded. It’s also the area with the most children. If you don’t like screaming babies… you’ve been warned. I find this area hectic and overwhelming as it has the most stuff happening and easiest access to the rest of the inner city area.
The south-​east corner at Sølvgade and Kronprinsessegade is quieter. Easy to find a patch of grass here. On the east side are washrooms and basketball courts. In that area, the hedges are planted in pairs, which means they’re huge and have a hollow center. Go look, it’s like there’s a secret passage inside the well-​trimmed hedges. Kids are constantly running in and out of them =) Although, other less innocent activities probably also happen in there.
The rose garden near the north-​east corner is my favourite because of the summer roses and castle view. In the afternoon, the sun shines fully on the benches facing the castle, and the scent of roses is wonderful. It’s usually quiet, and the tall hedges cut you off from the rest of the bustling park.
And finally, it’s worth it if you’re already here to pop around to the Rosenborg gardens entrance on Øster Voldgade. The castle needs admission, but the garden is free. You can sit by the moat under the giant willow and look out over a king’s view.