Things to do in Copenhagen

Landmark · City centre

The painted eighteenth-century canal houses and the harbour front behind them, now with a swimming-clean waterway running through the city.

Local tip: Nyhavn itself is a photograph. The interesting part is the harbour bus — a regular public boat on the Rejsekort, not a tour — which runs the length of the harbour for the price of a bus fare and is the best view in the city.

Neighborhood · Christianshavn

A self-declared free town on a former military site since 1971, with self-built houses, workshops and a complicated relationship with the state.

Local tip: Photography is prohibited on Pusher Street and that rule is enforced by residents, not by signs. Walk past it to the lakeside paths and the self-built houses on the ramparts, which are the genuinely remarkable part and almost never visited.

Food · Across the harbour from the centre

A decommissioned shipyard turned into food halls, breweries, a sauna, a climbing wall and Copenhagen's most interesting restaurants.

Local tip: Reachable by harbour bus, which turns the journey into part of the outing. La Banchina's tiny harbour sauna and swim spot is a local institution — book, because turning up does not work.

Nature · Eastern Amager

An artificial island beach five kilometres from the city centre, with a lagoon, dunes and clean swimming water.

Local tip: Fifteen minutes on the metro from the middle of the city puts you on open sand. Copenhageners swim here through the winter as well; there is a formal winter bathing club culture, and the sauna beside the water is the point of it.

Nature · Frederiksberg

A romantic royal garden with canals and a palace, joined to a second wooded park across the road, in the middle of the densest part of the city.

Local tip: Frederiksberg is a separate municipality entirely surrounded by Copenhagen, with its own tax rate and its own citizen service — a fact that matters when you rent. The Cisternerne, a former underground reservoir beneath Søndermarken, now hosts art installations in near-total darkness.

Culture · South-west Copenhagen

Denmark's largest cemetery, and in practice one of the city's biggest parks — 54 hectares of avenues, lakes and mature woodland.

Local tip: Danes treat cemeteries as public parks without embarrassment, and this one is used for running, cycling and picnicking. It is a fifteen-minute ride from the centre, almost empty on weekdays, and one of the quietest green spaces in a city that is short of them.