Coverage / Denmark
Denmark
Northern Europe
A Scandinavian nation of design culture, cycling infrastructure, and sustainable living, Copenhagen has become one of the most influential cities on the global fashion calendar, with a fashion week that punches well above its market size.
6 activities · 8 pairings · 11 verified providers
What you can do in Denmark
Museums & Galleries
- Copenhagenyear-roundCopenhagen packs two of Northern Europe's great art museums within a short walk of each other in the city centre. SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, opened its Historicist building in 1896 beside Rosenborg Castle and holds more than 260,000 works across seven centuries, with an unrivalled collection of Danish Golden Age painting and one of the world's finest holdings of Matisse. A few minutes south, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, built by the Carlsberg brewer Carl Jacobsen and opened in 1897, moves from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities to a French room heavy with Degas, Gauguin and Rodin, all arranged around a domed Winter Garden. Between them you get the sweep of European art from the ancient world to the twentieth century, in two buildings that are worth seeing for their own sake.
- HumlebaekApr May Jun Jul Aug SepLouisiana is the reason to make the short trip north from Copenhagen, and for many visitors it is the finest single museum experience in Denmark. Founded in 1958 by Knud W. Jensen, it strings a low, modernist run of glass corridors through parkland on the Oresund coast, so the art, the architecture and the view across the water to Sweden work as one piece. The permanent collection is strong on post-war and contemporary names, with a dedicated Giacometti gallery, work by Asger Jorn and the Cobra group, and a Yayoi Kusama installation, while the sculpture park sets Calder, Henry Moore and Alexander Calder mobiles against the sea. The changing exhibitions are consistently ambitious, and the cafe terrace over the sound is a destination in its own right. It is Scandinavia's most-visited museum of modern and contemporary art for good reason.
Music & Culture Festivals
- Copenhagen Jazz FestivalCopenhagenJulFor ten days every July the Copenhagen Jazz Festival turns the whole city into a stage, and it is one of the largest and longest-running jazz festivals in Europe. Run by a non-profit foundation, it programmes around 1,000 concerts across more than 100 venues, from the concert halls and the historic Jazzhus Montmartre to courtyards, cafes, churches and open-air squares, with a large share of the music free and outdoors. The scope is the appeal: you can build a day from lunchtime sets in a park to a headline show in a hall to a late jam in a basement club, mixing Danish and Nordic players with touring international names. It captures Copenhagen at its most sociable, in the long light of Danish midsummer, and it is easy to fold into a wider city visit.
- Roskilde FestivalRoskildeJun JulRoskilde Festival is Northern Europe's largest music festival and one of its most distinctive, a non-profit built on volunteers rather than a corporate promoter. Founded in 1971 and held on the Dyrskuepladsen fields outside the town, it draws up to 130,000 people for eight days at the turn of June and July, with the four big main-stage days closing out a week that starts with camping, art projects, talks and a famous run of warm-up days. It is run by the Roskilde Festival Charity Foundation, powered by more than 30,000 volunteers, and every krone of profit goes to humanitarian, cultural and youth causes, which shapes the whole feel of the place. The line-ups are broad and adventurous, mixing global headliners with a deep bench of new and experimental acts across the Orange Stage and beyond. It is as much a temporary city as a concert.
Best months at a glance
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