Hotel Sanders

Alexander Kølpin used to wait behind the red curtain of the Royal Theatre before a performance, and in 2017 he opened a hotel on Tordenskjoldsgade, the quiet street at the theatre's back. The building is three townhouses of 1869, later the old Hotel Opera, which the London studio Lind + Almond stripped back to the walls and filled with Danish mid-century furniture and rattan. In one bedroom a clawfoot bath stands free between two tall black-framed windows, with a mustard velvet armchair beside it, and the stair winds up past an arched window under a paisley runner. The courtyard has been roofed and heated, so Sanders Kitchen serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in it right through the Danish winter. On the fifth floor, palms and rattan sofas fill a conservatory under glass. It is open to the city as well as the guests, which makes the best room in the hotel one anybody can use.

Recommended for a city break on foot, as a couple or with children: Nyhavn and Strøget are each four minutes' walk. Children get cots and connecting rooms, parents a nanny, and the dog is welcome too. There is no pool or spa, and the gym is a partner's, by the canal. The hotel's better answer is on the water: its own 25-foot mahogany boat of 1964, with a captain to tell the city's stories for two hours and a picnic basket from Sanders Kitchen with a bottle of wine or Champagne in it. The gym can wait. The concierge can find seats at the Royal Theatre, or a tour backstage in its 1874 building. Afterwards there is TATA, the cocktail bar named after that red curtain, and on Fridays and Saturdays its curtain does not come down until two.