How many days do you need in Denmark?
Five days. That is the length of the itinerary we built for Denmark, across Copenhagen and Aarhus.
Here is what each day holds. Every stop below carries its time, and every gap says how to get to the next stop, with the walk or drive time wherever both stops are mapped.
Denmark · 5 days Copenhagen → Aarhus
Best time: May to August for long northern daylight, harbour swimming, and everything open.
Copenhagen: Tivoli GardensDay 1
🏛️9:00 AMTivoli Gardens
The 1843 pleasure garden in the middle of the city that Walt Disney visited and learned from. Wooden rollercoaster, gardens, and evening concerts. Seasonal. Check the calendar.
🚗 ~72 min · 20 mi
🖼️1:30 PMLouisiana Museum of Modern Art
Thirty-five minutes north by train: a low modernist building threaded through a sculpture park above the Øresund, with Sweden visible across the water. Frequently called the best-sited museum in Europe.
🚗 ~70 min · 20 mi
🌆6:00 PMNyhavn
The seventeenth-century canal of painted merchant houses, now the city's most photographed hundred metres. Andersen lived at number 20. Look, then eat somewhere else.
Copenhagen: Rosenborg CastleDay 2
🏛️9:00 AMRosenborg Castle
A Renaissance royal summer house holding the Danish crown jewels in its basement, set in the King's Garden where the whole city sits out in June.
🚶 ~31 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.2 mi
🥾1:30 PMHarbour baths
The harbour was cleaned enough to swim in by 2002 and the city built public bathing platforms in it. Islands Brygge is the central one and it is free.
🚶 ~22 min · 🚗 ~3 min · 0.8 mi
🎟️6:00 PMCanal boat tour
An hour through the harbour and canals from Nyhavn or Gammel Strand, passing the opera house and the Black Diamond library. The cheapest orientation there is.
Copenhagen: Round TowerDay 3
🏛️9:00 AMRound Tower
A 1642 observatory with a spiral ramp instead of stairs, built so the king could ride a horse to the top. Still the oldest working observatory in Europe.
🚶 ~19 min · 🚗 ~2 min · 0.7 mi
🖼️1:30 PMDesign Museum Denmark
The chairs, lamps, and objects that made Danish design a category, reopened in 2022 after a full rebuild. The one museum that explains why everything here looks the way it does.
🚶 ~47 min · 🚗 ~6 min · 1.7 mi
🌆6:00 PMNørrebro
The multicultural district north-west of the centre, Jægersborggade's small shops, Superkilen's deliberately global park, and the cemetery where locals picnic beside Kierkegaard.
Arrive in AarhusDay 4
🚄8:30 AMTrain to Aarhus
Copenhagen Central to Aarhus in about 3 hours on hourly InterCity services, crossing the Great Belt Bridge. Seat reservation is cheap and worth it on Friday and Sunday, when students travel and the trains fill.
🚄 ~3h · 116 mi
🏛️2:00 PMAarhus Cathedral
The longest and tallest church in Denmark, begun around 1200, with frescoes uncovered from under whitewash applied at the Reformation.
🚶 ~3 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.1 mi
🌆6:00 PMLatin Quarter
The old town's tight cobbled streets of small shops, cafés, and coloured house fronts. Compact enough to cover in an afternoon and pleasant enough to do it twice.
Aarhus: Infinite BridgeDay 5
🏛️9:00 AMInfinite Bridge
A circular wooden pier walking out into the bay and back: seasonal, installed each summer, and the most photographed structure in the city for good reason.
🚶 ~53 min · 🚗 ~7 min · 2.0 mi
🖼️1:30 PMARoS Aarhus Art Museum
Ten floors topped by Your Rainbow Panorama, a circular glass walkway in every colour of the spectrum, so you see the whole city through shifting light. The best single hour in Aarhus.
🚶 ~12 min · 🚗 ~2 min · 0.5 mi
🎟️6:00 PMViking Aarhus walk
The city was Aros, a fortified Viking settlement, and the ramparts are traceable under the modern street plan. A guide is what makes that visible.
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