Visit Denmark: When to Go, Budget and Itineraries

The capital brings together Nyhavn, the Tivoli Gardens open since 1843 and the free-town district of Christiania. Two to three days cover the historic centre, including Rosenborg Castle and the changing of the guard at noon outside Amalienborg. One more day allows a direct train ride to the Louisiana museum, thirty-five minutes north. Close to six trips out of ten there are made by bike, a dense network visitors use just as often. The Oresund Bridge links the city to Malmo in Sweden in 35 minutes, a popular day trip, as is Roskilde and its Viking ship museum, twenty-five minutes away by train.

Odense, birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, reopened its dedicated museum in 2021, with his childhood home a short walk from the cobbled Nedergade quarter. The Great Belt Bridge, eighteen kilometres between Zealand and Funen, is crossed by train in fifteen minutes or by car in about ten minutes with a toll. Renaissance-era Egeskov Castle and its gardens are worth a half day on their own, while the small fishing port of Faaborg, on the island's south coast, keeps its fishermen's houses and painting museum for a quieter detour.

Aarhus, the country's second city, fits into a weekend around the ARoS museum and its rainbow-coloured rooftop walkway, followed by the Den Gamle By open-air museum in the afternoon. Legoland in Billund takes a full family day and is an hour's drive from Aarhus. Allow roughly three hours by train to reach Skagen at the northern tip, where the North Sea and the Baltic visibly meet on the sand, a sight best seen with strong wind and a calm sea.

Set apart from the main routes, this 588 sq km island gets the country's highest sunshine hours and is reached by fast ferry from Ystad in Sweden, in just under two hours, or a 35-minute flight from Copenhagen. Its 12th-century medieval round churches, traditional herring smokehouses and the ruined Hammershus fortress reward the two or three nights needed to circle it, ideally by bike along the 105 km coastal trail.

Denmark has set the tone in furniture design since the 1950s, through names like Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner, and remains home to Royal Copenhagen porcelain, founded in 1775. On the food side, Copenhagen holds several starred addresses from the New Nordic movement born in the mid-2000s, with the most sought-after tables booked out months ahead, sometimes through an online lottery. Hygge, the Danish art of coziness built on candles and blankets, is best felt from October to March, as days grow noticeably shorter.