For centuries, the Swedish city of MalmA¶ (in Danish, MalmA?), 20km distant from Copenhagen across the A˜resund, and the surrounding province of SkA?ne were part of a Danish empire with its capital in Copenhagen. With the Swedish capture of SkA?ne in the seventeenth century, however, MalmA¶ was reduced from the second city of a major northern European power to a neglected outpost of a greater Sweden in which power rested firmly with distant Stockholm. The sense of rejection persists - MalmA¶'s residents derisively call people from Stockholm null A?ttas , "zero-eights", after the telephone code for Stockholm.

In July 2000, MalmA¶'s historical ties with the Danish capital were renewed with the opening of the A˜resund Bridge - Scandinavia's biggest-ever engineering project. The "bridge" (actually a road and rail link made up of a four-kilometre tunnel, a four-kilometre artificial island and an eight-kilometre cable bridge) has brought the two cities within a thirty-minute train ride of one another, effectively transforming MalmA¶ into a satellite-cum-suburb of Copenhagen, placing the Danish capital at the heart of a new region, the so-called A˜resund , which now looks set to dominate the western Baltic for the foreseable future.

Trains run roughly every 15-20min from Copenhagen's Central Station to MalmA¶ (65kr each way), via Kastrup airport, with fast onward connections from MalmA¶ to Stockholm, Gothenburg and Oslo (reservations always required). A single journey across the bridge by car costs 230kr. The Copenhagen Card is not valid for the crossing but can be used to get reductions at some museums in MalmA¶. For more information, contact the tourist office at MalmA¶ Central Station (tel 46 40/30 01 50, www.tourismmalmoe.com ).