Memorable museums, great art both international and Danish, historic architecture and modern design; and while focusing on the visual arts, this tour does provide the opportunity to gain a wider understanding of the history and culture of Denmark. Diversity is augmented by visiting a selection of provincial towns as well as the capital, and by journeying through the countryside and seeing the sea.

A major theme is Danish painting of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Occasional exhibitions grant British gallery-goers a glimpse of this phenomenon, but its full glory can only be seen in the land of its origin.

Danish artists found their voice with surprising suddenness during the Napoleonic wars, and the next thirty years are regarded as the Golden Age of Danish painting. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and Christen Købke are but two of a plethora of artists who produced perfectly delineated streetscapes, charmingly inconsequential landscapes and scenes of daily life radiant with contentedness, stylistically distinguished by brilliant naturalism and an inimitable rendering of light – crisp and warm in Greek and Italian views (many artists travelled south) but pale, pellucid and unmistakably Scandinavian in scenes of their native land.

Later in the century the mood darkened under the impulses of social commitment (Brendekilde, Henningsen), the deification of Nature (Janus La Cour) or a deeper exploration of the human psyche (Hammershøi was a sort of post-Hegelian Vermeer). Towards the turn of the century Symbolism had its proponents but many artists again turned their gaze towards their native land. The painters of Skagen on northernmost Jutland, led by P. S. Krøyer and Michael Ancher, and those of the Funen School, principally Johannes Larsen and Fritz Syberg, celebrated the low-key beauties of Denmark’s shores and countryside drenched in ineffable light of the North.

As is to be expected of a prosperous and outward looking nation, there is much high quality art from the rest of the world to be seen here. And as is to be expected of a country which is virtually synonymous with good design, recent museum buildings would merit a pilgrimage even if empty. Several are enhanced by a parkland or seaside setting. Curatorship – hanging and interpretation – is exemplary.

Some attention is paid to architecture of earlier times – whitewashed brick Gothic churches, the flamboyant Renaissance of Christian IV’s patronage, the handsome patrician streetscapes of the capital, the unassuming geometric perfection of Arne Jacobsen and his fellow modernists, the half-timbered vernacular of town and country.

Low lying but rarely flat, the sensual topography of Denmark was laid down by glaciers at the end of the Ice Age. Now, as when depicted by the painters of the Golden Age, it is picturesquely clothed with patches of fertile farmland interspersed with hedges and clumps of trees.

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