Amalienborg Palace

Four identical mansions around an octagonal square, with Frederik V on horseback in the middle. It looks like something built for a royal family. It was not. Nicolai Eigtved laid it out in the 1750s as the heart of an entirely new district, Frederiksstaden, and the four mansions went up for four noble families who could afford them. The king lived where kings lived, at Christiansborg. Then Christiansborg burned in 1794. The royal family suddenly had nowhere to live, in the middle of a Danish winter, and the solution was the simplest one available: they bought the mansions from the nobility. They moved in that December, and they have never moved out. What was meant to be temporary has lasted more than two hundred years. Turn around where you stand. The axis through Frederiksgade is set so that it meets the dome of the Marble Church at one end. Turn the other way and the line carries on across the harbour and hits the Opera House. That part was not planned in the 1750s, because the Opera only arrived in 2005, but they placed it exactly on the sightline. The Royal Life Guards march out from Rosenborg at half past eleven and change the guard here at noon. If the monarch is at home the flag flies over the palace, and the changing comes with a full band.