Copenhagen City Hall

Copenhagen City Hall (Rådhuset) on City Hall Square is one of the finest examples of Danish national romanticism in architecture, completed in 1905. The red-brick building with its tall tower combines medieval Danish and northern Italian influences into something distinctly Scandinavian. The tower, at 105.6 metres, offers free views from the top on guided tours.

Inside, the main hall is a handsome public space used for civic events. The main attraction is Jens Olsen's World Clock in the side hall — an extraordinary mechanical timepiece that took a watchmaker 27 years to design and build and is accurate enough to remain reliable for centuries. Guided tours of the building run on weekdays and include the tower. The price is minimal.

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The world clock inside Copenhagen City Hall was designed by the watchmaker Jens Olsen and took 27 years to build, from 1945 to 1955 (with a gap during the German occupation). It has 14,000 parts and displays not just the time but the Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar, the positions of the planets in the solar system, the motion of the stars, and tide predictions. It is accurate to 0.4 seconds per 300 years.

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