The twenty-minute walk from the train station along Vesterbrogade toward the town centre takes you past the most impressive section of the old ramparts. They stretch for 4km and rise 15m above the streets, and walking along the top gives a good view of the layout of the town. But it's the Landsoldaten statue, opposite Princes Port, which best exemplifies the local spirit. The bronze figure holds a rifle in its left hand, a sprig of leaves in the right, and its left foot rests on a captured cannon. The inscription on the statue reads "6 July 1849", the day the town's battalion made a momentous sortie against German troops in the first Schleswig war - an anniversary celebrated as Fredericia Day. The downside of the battle was the 500 Danes who were killed and who lie in a mass grave in the grounds of Trinitatis Kirke in Kongensgade. Predictably, 300 years of armed conflict also form the core of the displays at the Fredericia Museum , Jernbanegade 10 (daily noon-4pm, Sept to mid-June closed Mon; tel 72.10.69.80; 20kr), along with local house interiors from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Fredericia's tourist office (June-Aug Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-2pm; rest of year Mon-Fri 9.30am-5pm, Sat 10am-1pm; tel 75.92.13.77, www.visitfredericia.dk ) is on the corner of Danmarksgade and Norgesgade. Unless you want to laze on Fredericia's fine beaches , which begin at the eastern end of the ramparts, there's little reason to hang around very long. If you do want to stay, however, try the youth hostel at Vester Ringvej 98 (tel 75.92.12.87, www.fredericia-danhostel.dk ; A?10-15/$16-24/a?¬18-27), a short ride on bus #6 from the train station, or the campsite (tel 75.95.71.83; April-Oct), on the Vejle fjord, adjacent to a public beach, also reached by bus #6.