Assistens Cemetery

This is where Copenhagen buries its famous dead and takes its living for a picnic. Assistens Cemetery was established in 1760 as a burial ground for the poor — the name literally means "the assisting cemetery" — laid out to relieve the overcrowded graveyards inside the walled city. A plague outbreak in 1711 had killed around 23,000 citizens, making the burial capacity problem impossible to ignore any longer. For its first twenty-five years, it served exclusively as a paupers' cemetery, and the city had to raise prices for burials within the walls to convince wealthier citizens that a cemetery this far out was acceptable.

It worked. During Copenhagen's Golden Age in the early 19th century, Assistens became fashionable, and today it reads like a who's-who of Danish culture. Hans Christian Andersen is buried here. Søren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, lies in Section A. Painter Christen Købke, physicist Niels Bohr, and several American jazz musicians who settled in Copenhagen during the 1950s and 1960s — including Ben Webster and Kenny Drew — all rest within these walls. The cemetery is simultaneously a memorial park and a living cultural document.

But what makes Assistens genuinely unusual is how Copenhageners use it. In summer, the cemetery functions as Nørrebro's primary green space. People sunbathe on the grass between headstones, read books against 19th-century monuments, and have picnics within sight of Kierkegaard's grave. Joggers run the perimeter path. It is not considered disrespectful — it is considered perfectly Danish. The cemetery was designed in the Romantic style with large, rare trees and a long parkway lined with poplars, and it is one of the most beautiful green spaces in the city.

The dead here are in good company, and the living treat the place with a warmth that says something profound about how Denmark relates to mortality.