• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

Rooms at the Hotel Fox.   (Photo: Courtesy Hotel Fox)

The Hotel Fox’s wildly eccentric (albeit pint-size) rooms (from $165) are the brainchildren of 21 graphic designers, illustrators, and graffiti artists. (Try Swiss artist Benjamin Güdel’s altar to the alpine princess, Heidi.) There is free wi-fi throughout, stylish Kronan bikes for rent, and a hugely popular lobby lounge and basement eatery.

Though pricier, the Technicolor trappings of Hotel Skt. Petri (from $280), centrally located in the Latin Quarter of Pisserenden, are hard to pass up. Built in 1928 in the Danish Functionalist style, the hotel originally housed a department store. Now it’s filled with 268 modernist rooms dressed with raw-silk settees, colorful headboards, and panoramas of the area’s patinaed spires.

Even more modish are the surroundings at Front (doubles from $260), an eight-month-old harborside hotel near the lively bar and restaurant scene of the Nyhavn Canal. Order a Hemmingway Special (rum, lime, grapes, and maraschino cherries) in the hotel’s bar and take it with you to the hushed reading lounge, decked out with design books and brass-studded loungers.

Architecture buffs almost have to stay in Arne Jacobsen’s 22-story Radisson SAS Royal (from $280). All of the 265 rooms (choose a south-facing one for the best views) are state of the art and cater to business travelers—with the notable exception of room 606, which remains in its original state, complete with all of Jacobsen’s iconic Bauhaus-inspired furniture and fittings.

Published on January 24, 2007 as a web exclusive.