Assistens Cemetery

Why it exists

The plague of 1711 killed about 20,000 of Copenhagen's 66,000 people, and the churchyards inside the walls never recovered the capacity. Assistens was laid out from 1757 outside the city and opened in 1760 as somewhere to bury people who could not pay for anything better. Then the Danish Golden Age happened and the same ground became fashionable, which is a reversal you can still read in the monuments.

Who is in it

Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr are the three names most people come for. The painters C.W. Eckersberg and Christen Købke are there, and so are the jazz musicians Ben Webster and Kenny Drew, which surprises people who arrive expecting only the nineteenth century. Andersen's Copenhagen addresses are on the Andersen page.

Using it

In the 1800s, excursions to Assistens with picnic baskets and tea were an ordinary Copenhagen pastime, and the place has never stopped being a park. It is a burial ground first, so the etiquette is what you would expect of one: quiet voices, keep to the paths, leave the stones alone. It is also one of the honest answers to the question of what you can do in this city without spending anything, which is covered on the costs question.

No guided walk on this site goes into the cemetery. The Danish folk legends walk and the English ghost walk both stay in the centre — see every walk.

Frequently asked questions