Copenhagen Walking Tour: A Self-Guided Old Town Route

Copenhagen is an easy city to love and an even easier one to walk. Flat, compact, and famously friendly to anyone on foot, its old center packs royal palaces, a candy-colored harbor, spires you can climb, and one of the longest shopping streets in Europe into a space you can cross in half an hour. This self-guided Copenhagen walking tour ties the best of it together into one gentle loop, from the city hall to the royal quarter by way of a canal that looks painted. It is one of the most relaxed self-guided walking tours you can do, four flat kilometers with a coffee stop or three built in. Bring a layer for the Nordic weather and a bit of loose change for the tower climbs.

Before you set off

Give yourself a half day, three or four hours at a gentle stroll, more if you climb a tower or two or stop for a long lunch, which in this city you should. Copenhagen is flat as a pancake and made for walking, though the locals will remind you that it is really a cycling city, so keep an eye out for bikes and never wander into a bike lane without looking, since they move fast and have the right of way. The weather is changeable and often cool even in summer, so bring a layer and something for rain, and take heart that the Danes have perfected the art of the cozy indoor refuge, so a warm cafe is never far. Everything on this route sits within a compact center and is well signed, and the harbor and canals make it easy to keep your bearings. Do stop for the local pleasures as you go, an open sandwich, a pastry, a coffee, or a beer by the water, because pausing often is very much the Copenhagen way.

Rådhuspladsen

Start in Radhuspladsen, the City Hall Square, a large open plaza at the entrance to the old town, dominated by the tall red-brick city hall with its slender clock tower. This is one of the city's main gathering places and transport hubs, busy with people, buses, and bikes, and it makes a natural starting point. The city hall itself is worth a look, its facade decorated with a gilded statue of the city's founder, and on request you can climb its tower for a view over the rooftops, or step inside to see the astonishing astronomical clock, a masterpiece of watchmaking with tens of thousands of moving parts. Around the square you will spot the famous statue of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish storyteller, sitting and looking toward the amusement gardens of Tivoli across the way. Get your bearings here, then head east across the square toward the canal and the palace on its own small island, only a few minutes away, where the city was born.

Christiansborg Palace

A short walk east brings you to Christiansborg Palace, standing on the tiny island of Slotsholmen where Copenhagen began over eight hundred years ago. This is the seat of Danish power, home to the parliament, the supreme court, and the prime minister's office, and parts of it are still used by the royal family for grand occasions, which makes it a rare place where all three branches of a country's government share one roof. The present palace is the third to stand here, its predecessors having burned down, and beneath it you can visit the excavated ruins of the very first castle. The great tower of Christiansborg is the tallest in the city, and you can ride the lift to the top for free for one of the finest views in Copenhagen, out over the spires and the harbor. Wander the cobbled courtyards and the royal stables, and look for the old stock exchange nearby with its extraordinary spire of four dragons' tails twisted together. When you have taken it in, cross back off the island and head north into the pedestrian streets to join the flow of the old town.

Strøget

Now you join Stroget, one of the longest pedestrian shopping streets in Europe, a car-free ribbon that runs right through the heart of the old town from one great square to another. It is not a single street but a chain of them, linking a series of lovely old squares, and it has been closed to traffic since the 1960s, one of the first streets in the world to be handed back to people on foot. Along it you will find everything from flagship stores to old cafes, street performers, and the odd handsome fountain, and the crowds are part of the atmosphere. Duck off it whenever you like, since the little streets on either side hide antique shops, design stores, and quiet courtyards, and the Latin Quarter lanes to the north are especially pretty. Pause in one of the squares to watch the city go by over a coffee. About two thirds of the way along, turn north off the main drag for a couple of minutes toward a fat round tower that rises above the rooftops, an unusual landmark you can climb in the most unusual way.

The Round Tower

The Round Tower, or Rundetaarn, is one of Copenhagen's most charming oddities, a squat cylindrical tower built in the seventeenth century as an astronomical observatory, the oldest still working in Europe. What makes it special is how you get to the top, not by stairs but by a wide spiral ramp that winds around the hollow core seven and a half times, built so that a horse and carriage could be driven up, and legend says a Russian tsar once rode up on horseback while his wife followed in a coach. The gentle climb is easy on the legs and fun for children, and at the top an open platform gives a lovely view over the old town's roofs and towers in every direction. Along the way you pass the old library hall and the hollow core of the tower, and there is often a small exhibition to see. It is a quick, cheap, and genuinely delightful stop. Come back down the ramp, rejoin the streets, and head east and north toward the grand square where the old town meets the harbor.

Kongens Nytorv

Kongens Nytorv, the King's New Square, is the grand formal heart of the city, a large round plaza ringed by stately old buildings and centered on a statue of the king who laid it out over three hundred years ago. Around its edge stand some of the city's finest facades, the Royal Danish Theatre, the elegant old hotel, grand mansions and old department stores, and in winter the center of the square becomes an ice rink. It is a change of scale after the tight shopping streets, open and stately, planted with an avenue of trees. This is where the old town hands you over to the harbor, and the most famous view in Copenhagen is now just a few steps away, off the eastern side of the square. Take a slow look around at the ring of grand buildings, then walk to the corner where a canal opens off the square, and the colors hit you all at once.

Nyhavn

Nyhavn is the picture of Copenhagen, the seventeenth century canal lined on one side by a row of tall, narrow houses painted in bright reds, yellows, blues, and greens, with old wooden sailing ships moored along the water below. Once a rough sailors' harbor full of taverns, it is now the city's most photographed spot, and for good reason, since the row of colored gables reflected in the canal is pure joy on a sunny day. The storyteller Hans Christian Andersen lived in several of these houses over the years, marked now with plaques. The quayside is packed with cafes and restaurants, and while they are touristy and not cheap, sitting with a drink and watching the boats is one of the classic Copenhagen pleasures, or you can do as the locals do and buy a beer to drink sitting on the edge of the quay. Canal boat tours leave from here too, a lovely way to see the city from the water if you have the time. Stroll the length of the sunny side, then cross the little bridge at the end and walk north into the calm, palatial streets of the royal quarter.

Amalienborg Palace

A few minutes north you enter Amalienborg, the winter home of the Danish royal family, and it is unlike any palace you have seen. Rather than one grand building, it is four matching rococo mansions set around a large octagonal courtyard, with a statue of a king on horseback at the center, an elegant and surprisingly intimate arrangement. The royals still live here, and if you time it right you can watch the changing of the royal guard at midday, the bearskin-capped soldiers marching in from the city, and if the monarch is in residence the guard is at its fullest. You can walk freely across the courtyard right up to the palace doors, closer than you can get to most working royal homes. Look down the axis of the square in one direction and you see the harbor and a modern opera house across the water, and in the other, a great green dome rising over the rooftops, which is where you are heading last. Take in the symmetry of the four palaces, then walk the short way up toward that dome.

Frederik's Church

The walk finishes at Frederik's Church, known to everyone as the Marble Church, whose vast green copper dome is one of the defining shapes of the Copenhagen skyline. Modeled loosely on St Peter's in Rome, it has the largest church dome in Scandinavia, spanning some thirty meters, held up on a ring of columns and lit from above. It sits directly on the axis of Amalienborg, so the royal palaces and the church were designed to frame each other, and standing between them you feel the grand plan of the whole quarter. The building had a troubled history, left as a ruin for nearly a century and a half after the money ran out, before it was finally completed in the late nineteenth century. Step inside if it is open, since the interior beneath the dome is calm and beautifully proportioned, and on some days you can climb up to the dome itself for a fine view. This is a fitting, grand note to end on. From here the harbor, Nyhavn, and the center are all an easy stroll back, so find a cafe, order something warm, and let the flat, friendly city settle in your legs.

Why walk it

Copenhagen is made for walking, flat and compact and stitched together by pedestrian streets, canals, and squares that a car would only get in the way of. Everything on this route sits within an easy stroll of the next thing, the harbor and the towers keep you oriented, and the pleasure is as much in the pauses as the sights, a pastry here, a beer by the water there. Watch for the bikes, bring a layer for the northern weather, and let yourself wander off the route into the small streets, where the design shops and quiet courtyards hide. If you would rather not walk it alone, open the Walk With Me live map to see who else is out walking Copenhagen, and share a coffee and a canal view with a little company along the way.