Kitty's Corner

I've never been a stranger in my own city, but there are still some sights I have yet to explore. Our Saviours Church was one of them. The church is most famous for its corkscrew spire. The spire is topped by a vase-like structure, carrying a gilded globe with a 4-meter-tall figure, carrying a banner. It has an infamous reputation for being the ugliest sculpture in Copenhagen but is intentionally made with exaggerated proportions because it is only meant to be seen from long distances.



Once you get to the top of the Church, there's the tower. The tower has an external winding staircase that can be climbed to the top. I've heard that there should be the most fantastic view over Copenhagen from up there, so we obviously had to go right to the top:



There are 398 stairs on the way to the top, and we saw some very interesting things as we climbed up. We saw a room where they store fallen angels and angel wings...


(Flarin kept going on about Doctor Who, and saying don't shut your eyes - I didn't get the joke to be honest).

We also ran into a warning sign:



The bells didn't ring though. I must admit was slightly disappointed at that, until I actually saw the bells. Fuck, they were big!!



I know it's not a very good pic, but that's the best I could do under those conditions.

After a lot of stairs, we were finally there. We climbed up to the very top, just underneath the big golden ball that you can see on the first pictures. And man, what a view from up there. We had chosen the perfect day for our little expedition, so here's the sight that met us:



And here's a pic of people waiting for us to get down so they could get to the very top. I took this pic so you could get an impression of how high up we really were.



And now for the worst part of the tour: Climbing back down. Most of the staircase, both inside and out, is only wide enough for one person at a time. There's a balcony most of the way round, at the door where you go to the outside to climb the spire, having climbed 2/3rds of the way up on the inside of the Church.These are some of the stairs we faced again on the way back down...



There is a long-lived urban legend which says that the architect who designed and built the tower killed himself by jumping from the top of the spire, when he realised that the spiral was built turning the wrong way - anticlockwise - around. There is not a grain of truth in this myth though, since the architect, Lauritz de Thurah, died in his bed seven years after the spire was completed. There is nothing in the records to indicate that he should have been unhappy with his work in any way. So - myth busted! But the legend still lives on. In fact I heard several people mention it on the way up into the tower.

I really enjoyed this little trip, and will recommend it to anybody who wants to see Copenhagen from the top. It costs 35 DKK (4.70 EUR) per person to get in and up.