City Hall Square (Radhuspladsen), Copenhagen

Presided by the stately, historic City Hall, Radhuspladsen square is the focal point of many miles of Copenhagen's beautiful pedestrian streets and a favored gathering spot for street performers and international folk visiting the Danish capital. Thus, just as in so many other places in this magical city, English is spoken here widely and of better quality than you would hear in the public plazas of most major American cities.

Once part of Copenhagen's fortified west end, this area contained within its walls as much as 150,000 people by the mid-19th century. Quite expectedly, the overcrowding led to hygiene problems (including a cholera outbreak), so after nearly seven centuries, the walls eventually had to come down.

Today, the redesigned square features, among other attractions, the Dragon Fountain (1904), depicting a bull and a dragon in combat. Another impressive sight to look out for is the Weather Girl (perched atop the Richs Building at the intersection of Rådhuspladsen and Vesterbrogade), which tells when the rain is due. There is also a statue of Hans Christian Andersen, one of – if not the – most popular Danish writer, and a bronze depicting two lur blowers mounted on top of a tall terracotta column. The latter is a gift to the city from the Carlsberg Foundation on the occasion of the centenary of its founder, J. C. Jacobsen.

Just across the street stands the rather peculiar Dansk Industri building containing a showroom for green technologies (House of Green), plus a series of two-storey flagship stores and restaurants on Vesterbrogade. Down the same street towers the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Copenhagen's only skyscraper, built in 1960 as the world's first design hotel.