Odense

Odense is Denmark's third city and the capital of the island of Funen. Hans Christian Andersen, author of The Little Match Girl, The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid, was born here in 1805. The train from Copenhagen takes about an hour and a half.

The old quarter has cobbled streets and painted half-timbered houses, and at its heart is H.C. Andersen's House, opened in 2021 to a design by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, two-thirds of it underground. Visitors step into the world of the tales through sound, light and images, and beside it stands the small house where the writer was born.

Odense sits halfway between Copenhagen and Jutland, and can be seen in a day or as an overnight stop on the way to LEGOLAND.