Odense

The main city of the island of Funen and the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, one of the oldest towns in Denmark, its name drawn from Odins Ve, the shrine of the god Odin. The old quarter of low cobbled streets around the writer's birthplace has become a city of memory, with a new fairytale museum sunk into gardens, while the soaring Gothic cathedral of Saint Canute holds the bones of a king murdered at the altar in ten eighty-six. Behind the fairytale city lies a deeper one: the buried ring of a Viking fortress under the streets, a royal palace and garden, the winding river and its park, and a great red-brick textile mill reborn as a quarter of art. Read Andersen's city and the town beneath it at your own pace.