Copenhagen Canal Tour

Copenhagen is a harbour city, and the best way to understand its shape is from the water. The classic canal tour is a one-hour loop in a low, open boat that leaves from Nyhavn or from the Ved Stranden quay opposite Christiansborg and covers the main sights in a single, easy sweep, with a live guide speaking English and Danish on most departures and an audio guide in several other languages on some. The route usually runs out of Nyhavn into the inner harbour, past the Royal Danish Playhouse and across to the Opera House on Holmen, along the waterfront in front of Amalienborg Palace, and out towards Langelinie to see the Little Mermaid from the water, which is the only angle from which her rock is not crowded. It then turns back through the narrow canals of Christianshavn, a seventeenth-century district built in the Dutch style with moored houseboats, colourful warehouses and the spiral spire of the Church of Our Saviour overhead, and along the canals around Slotsholmen, past Christiansborg and the scaffolded Borsen, before returning to its starting point. The bridges on the old canals are very low, so when the guide calls a warning, everyone ducks. Tiqets sells the Stromma Classic Canal Tour, one of the main operators, as a timed departure, and the provider uses covered and heated boats in the winter season, so the tour runs year-round. A canal tour is the perfect first activity for any visit: it gives you the layout of the city, the names of the major buildings and a few good stories in an hour, and it is relaxing for children and adults alike. It is also an excellent choice on a jet-lagged first afternoon or a rainy day, when the covered boats make the most of a grey sky.

The water tells the city's story. Copenhagen grew up as a trading and naval port, and its name means merchants' harbour. Christian IV built Christianshavn on reclaimed land in the early seventeenth century as a merchant town, Christian V had the Nyhavn canal dug to bring ships into the heart of the city, and the Holmen naval base was for centuries the home of the Danish fleet. Today the harbour is clean enough to swim in, with public harbour baths, kayaks, floating saunas and solar boats sharing the water with the tour boats, and the new bridges for cyclists and pedestrians have tied the two banks together. From the boat, you see how modern architecture, from the Opera House to the Black Diamond library extension, sits beside centuries-old warehouses.

How to choose: the classic one-hour tour with a live guide is the right choice for most people. Departures from Nyhavn are the most popular and can mean queues in summer, so a timed ticket bought ahead is useful; Ved Stranden, a few minutes' walk away, is often calmer. Sit on the side away from the sun in summer, bring a layer even on warm days, as the breeze on the water is cool, and keep phones and cameras secure when ducking under bridges. In winter, the covered boats have windows, so photos are a little harder, but you stay warm.

Make the most of it: take the tour on your first day, then use what you have learned to plan the rest. Pair it with lunch in Nyhavn, the Christiansborg reception rooms near Ved Stranden, or a walk through Christianshavn and Christiania. For more time on the water, the harbour buses, part of the public transport network, are a cheap way to travel up and down the harbour, and in summer you can rent a small electric boat and captain it yourself. In December, a canal tour followed by a mug of glogg at the Nyhavn Christmas market is one of the season's most Copenhagen experiences.