Hotel Skt. Annae

Vilhelm Hammershøi painted his wife, Ida, again and again with her back turned, and from 1898 to 1909 he painted the rooms they lived in at Strandgade 30, in greys and muted colours. The hotel takes his palette, light-grey walls and matt gold taps, and hangs his pictures beside portraits of the owners' family. It is a run of adjoining townhouses on Sankt Annæ Plads, with a courtyard at its heart roofed in glass and filled with plants. Breakfast is served there, at a table made from wood out of Nyborg's old harbour, which has seen wetter mornings.

Recommended for couples who want Frederiksstaden's grand streets on foot, and for families who book an Apartment, which has its own kitchen. Amalienborg is five minutes along Amaliegade and Nyhavn's canal seven. The square outside has playgrounds for the children and a pétanque court for everyone else, and the hotel rents out pale bicycles with baskets and its name on the frame. From two in the afternoon The Club tops its Bloody Marys with an oyster. The Shrimp, Torben Klitbo's American diner in the atrium, serves steaks, and oysters as well: a restaurant named after one shellfish and loyal to another.