The son of a washerwoman and a cobbler in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, Hans-Christian Andersen was born in this half-timbered house in the small Danish town of Odense in 1805. His mother was illiterate and his father died at a young age. Few would have thought the Danish author would become a world-famous storyteller.

At age 14, Hans-Christian Andersen left Odense to try his luck in the metropolis of Copenhagen where he hoped to become an actor. He eventually found his way to writing and at age 30, started penning fairy tales which brought him international fame.

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum, which is located in the house where he was born, underwent seven years of renovation led by the office of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Kuma, who is also responsible for the new Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, expanded the home to include an underground area where guests can immerse themselves in his fairy tales, including "The Princess and the Pea."

The inspiration for the underground museum came from the concept of Andersen's stories. According to architect Kengo Kuma: "The idea behind the architectural design is similar to Andersen's method, where a small world suddenly transforms into a larger universe," he told news agency AFP.

Twelve artists participated in the redesign of the underground exhibition space, which includes light and music installations. Visitor Ara Halici had traveled from the Netherlands to visit the museum. "It's wonderful to be able to escape from everyday life here," he told news agency AFP.

The museum's redesign also includes a sprawling garden. Because the Danish municipality of Odense decided to ban cars from its city center before the museum's renovation, one can enjoy the sprawling green space in peace.

In summer 2021 when the renovation work was not yet fully completed, Danish Queen Margrethe visited the redesigned museum. Andersen is considered a national hero in Denmark. Before his death in 1875, he wrote 158 fairy tales and 800 poems, including classics such as "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Snow Queen" and "The Little Mermaid."

Recently, Disney adaptations of his fairy tales, such as "Frozen," have ensured that Hans Christian Andersen continues to enjoy worldwide fame more than a hundred years after his death: The former Hans Christian Andersen Museum was visited by 100,000 guests a year, most of them from abroad. Around 20,000 of them came from China, where Andersen enjoys immense popularity, according to AFP.

The new museum complex was only open for a few months before the omicron variant forced museums in Denmark to close in the winter of 2021. Until the reopening, there's plenty of time to read Andersen's fairy tales, such as "Snow Queen," "Ugly Duckling" and "The Emperor's New Clothes."

Among the many silhouettes on show at the "Hans Christian Andersen: A Poet with Quill and Scissors" exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bremen is one depicting a bizarre male plant with a large head, surrounded by petals. Here, the Danish writer illustrated his idea about the spirit of nature, described by co-curator Detlef Stein as "a living flower that has feelings."

From childhood, Andersen was preoccupied with images of mills. In his day, they dominated Denmark's landscape. Here, he depicts two Ole Lukojes, mythic creatures who send children off to sleep (the equivalent of the German Sandman). Exhibition co-curator Anne Buschhoff described how Ole "comes in the evening and holds an umbrella painted with beautiful pictures above the heads of good children."

"Andersen's silhouettes are always connected to his life story," said co-curator Anne Buschhoff. He aspired to be an actor, dancer or singer, but those dreams didn't materialize. Many of the motifs in the exhibition, however, show ballerinas and theater stages. Here, Andersen locked his two dancers in a corked bottle.

This large-format silhouette shows Anderson's entire repertoire of motifs. It was one of his final and most elaborate works, which he created for Dorothea Melchior, a friendly merchant's wife. In addition to millmen, harlequins and ballerinas, two skulls can also be seen. The work was created just a year before he died of cancer at the age of 70.

Andersen's travels took him all over Europe. In the capital of the then-Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (now Istanbul), he was particularly inspired. As a child he also read the fairy tales of 1001 Nights. "You can imagine the most magnificent magic palaces," he recalled in 1841 on his journey to the near East. His artwork contains various oriental fantasy castles.

In addition to his silhouettes, the Bremen exhibition is showing several of Anderson's collages. For many of them, he made use of illustrated magazines, which were hugely popular in his day. In his collages, Andersen was interested in how his work appealed both visually and by touch. He deliberately mixed paper with different surfaces and consistencies.

During a trip to Italy, Andersen witnessed a volcanic eruption. He saw a broad stream of lava flowing down Vesuvius, which left a lasting impression. In this drawing, he dispensed entirely with internal structures. What appears quite modern today baffled his contemporaries. "He couldn't do justice to the standard of academic drawing," said co-curator Detlef Stein.

In the last years of his life, Andersen enjoyed so-called blotchography, an experimental technique based on ink blotches that, mostly by chance, drip onto paper. Inspired by this coincidental form, tiny pictures like this one emerged, in which Andersen, again, recalled memories from his travels.

This story was recorded by Dortchen Wild, a storyteller who married Wilhelm Grimm. As it turns out, the theme of leaving children in the woods was quite popular in European folktales. A French story, "Le Petit Poucet" from 1967, starts out almost identically, while Madame d'Aulnoy's "Finette Cendron" mentions three princesses who get lost in the woods and find their way to an ogre's house.

A miller's daughter is locked in a castle and forced to spin straw into gold. Fortunately, Rumpelstiltskin comes to her rescue, spinning straw into gold in return for her valuables. In the end, it doesn't quite work out for Rumpelstiltskin, who suffers the unusual death of being "split in two." The famous name comes from the German word "Rumpelstiltz," a type of goblin found in German mythology.

This sinister Grimm tale may be based on true events. A glass window in a church of Hamelin depicts a piper and has an inscription that states in 1284: "By a piper, clothed in many kinds of colors, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced, and lost at the place of execution near the koppen." Even today, no one is sure why the children were taken away or what exactly happened that year.

Some Grimm fables are just too dark to be made into Disney classics. "Death's Messenger" tells the story of death, who appears as a person and is nursed back to life by a healthy man. Death promises to spare no one, but tells his savior that he will give him a heads-up before his final hour. Needless to say, death works in mysterious ways, and the youth doesn't quite get what he bargained for.

The Brothers Grimm are immortalized with this statue in Kassel. In their dark tale, a man makes a pact with an evil dwarf, promising to give up his son in exchange for riches. The outcast son goes on a series of harrowing adventures involving a snake, a princess and a magic ring. Atypically, nobody seems to have the redeeming qualities one would expect to find in a typical fairy tale protagonist.

Girl meets frog, girl kisses frog, girl gets frog-turned-prince. We all know this famous amphibious story by the Brothers Grimm, but many may not know it also goes by the title "Iron Heinrich." First published in their 1812 edition of tales, this was the first work in their collection. Moral of the story? Never say never.

German scholar Eckhard Sander revealed the story of the fair princess poisoned by her step-mother may have been based on the true story of Margarete von Waldeck, a German countess born to Philip IV in 1533. She fell in love with a Spanish prince, whom her parents disapproved of, then died at the age of 21 under mysterious circumstances. A poisoned apple, perhaps?

The misadventures of a donkey, dog, cat and rooster are memorialized in the German town of Bremen where visitors are greeted by a large bronze statue of the group of critters. The story may have arrived in Europe via India as early as 91 B.C. As the town's historical website points out, in India, musical animals were thought to exist at that time and could have provided inspiration for the tale.

The story of the long-haired princess has been a favorite for decades. Few know that Rapunzel is another word for a vegetable called a rampion, which has leaves like lettuce and roots like a radish. The English phrase "let your hair down" may have hailed from the story of this golden-haired maiden.

In this tale, a struggling, elderly cobbler is mysteriously aided by magical elves. Originally titled "Die Wichtelmänne," this tale has made numerous appearances in contemporary pop culture. In the Harry Potter series, for example, house elves like Dobby (pictured) look after human wizards and are never seen again once given clothing, just as in the Grimm story.

The cast for the 2019 Lion King film is truly star-studded — Donald Glover voiced Simba; James Earl Jones is the voice of Simba's father Mufasa, just like in the original animated version and the title song is by Beyonce. Unlike the 1994 movie, the remake directed by Jonathan Favreau enters the brave new digital realm of photorealism.

The 1994 "Lion King" remains to this day the highest-grossing traditionally animated film ever made. The trailer for the CGI remake of the Savannah-set story inspired by Shakespeare's "Hamlet" was viewed nearly 225 million times within 24 hours of its release in November 2018.

Filmmaker Guy Ritchie is best known for action comedies and not musicals, yet he directed the live-action version of "Aladdin." Will Smith morphs into the blue giant Genie. Canadian actor Mena Massoud (right) takes on the title role alongside Naomi Scott (left) as Princess Jasmine. The film empowers her character: She's fighting for equality and the opportunity to succeed her father as Sultan.

Along with "The Little Mermaid" (1989) and "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), the 1992 film based on a classic Arabic folk tale contributed to what is now referred to as the "Disney Renaissance." The late Robin Williams memorably voiced Genie with his signature wit. Critics praised the movie for entertaining both children and adults, and it won two Oscars.

Tim Burton, the filmmaker who's renowned for celebrating freaks and outcasts, was called to direct the remake of Walt Disney's animated classic "Dumbo," which tells the story of an elephant whose oversized ears make him the laughing stock of a circus. Frequent Burton collaborators such as the composer Danny Elfman and the actors Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito are also on the bill.

Dumbo's big ears allow him to fly, even though the baby elephant believes that its superpower comes from carrying a magic feather. Produced during wartime, the animation style of the original "Dumbo" was kept deliberately simple to reduce production costs. The 64-minute film is one of Disney's shortest animated features.

Tim Burton is not new to Disney's craze of remaking its own animated classics as live-action films; he even helped establish the trend by transforming "Alice in Wonderland" into a dark fantasy adventure. The 2010 movie starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter was such a box office hit that Disney wanted more. A sequel by a different director came out in 2016.

Disney first turned Lewis Carroll's books into an animated feature in 1951. A flop when initially released, it turned into a cult classic by the 1960s. Hippies had then recognized that the whole story of Alice eating magical substances and discovering a strange world by going down the rabbit hole reflected their acid trips.

The first Disney animated film to be remade as a live-action movie was "The Jungle Book" — back in 1994. Nearly two decades later, the tale was modernized again with the help of highly evolved computer-generated imagery. Such remakes typically include top Hollywood stars. The 2016 version features the voices of Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o and Scarlett Johansson.

Based on Rudyard Kipling's book from 1894, the 1967 animated musical comedy follows Mowgli, an orphan child raised by wolves, as he sets off to leave the jungle with his friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear. The German-dubbed version of "The Jungle Book" captured the spirit of the 1960s particularly well, which contributed to making it the best selling movie ever in Germany.

"Cinderella" gave English actress Lily James her film breakthrough in the title role, alongside Cate Blanchett as the evil stepmother. Sandy Powell's costume designs were particularly spectacular; her work was nominated for an Oscar and several other top awards. The film was praised for being faithful to the original animated work's "old-fashioned magic."

Disney was on the verge of bankruptcy when it produced "Cinderella," but the adaptation of Charles Perrault's fairy tale became the studio's greatest hit upon its release in 1950. If many people describe Cinderella as the archetype of the anti-feminist character — a young girl setting all her hopes on Prince Charming to be saved — others see her as a model of revolt against an abusive family.

With production costs of around $225 million, the live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast" is the most expensive musical ever made. That bet paid off, as the movie also grossed over $1.25 billion worldwide. The movie, starring Emma Watson as Belle, also made headlines as director Bill Condon gave a gay scene to Josh Gad's character of LeFou — making him Disney's first official LGBT character.

This film was based on a French fairy tale that had already been adapted into a film by Jean Cocteau in 1946. It was the first animated movie ever nominated for an Oscar as Best Picture. Though it didn't win in that category, the powerful soundtrack picked up two Academy Awards and many Grammys.

Disney is not the only studio to remake beloved classics. The trend is noticeable in Germany as well, where several popular children's stories have been adapted into films in recent years. The live-action feature based on Michael Ende's novel "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver" had a production budget of $25 million, making it one of the most expensive films ever made in the country.

With more modest means, Germany's famous marionette theater Augsburger Puppenkiste had already offered its version of the story. First filmed in black-and-white at the beginning of the 1960s, the TV movies were so successful that a remake of the adventures of Luke the steam locomotive driver and his young accomplice, Jim Button, was also filmed in color in 1976.