Aarhus

Aarhus calls itself the world's smallest big city and means both halves: Denmark's second, on a bay of the Kattegat, with a Viking past under its cathedral, a river dug back out of its culvert to run between cafés, and a habit of building the surprising. On the roof of the ARoS museum a circular walkway of coloured glass — Ólafur Elíasson's rainbow panorama — shows the city in every hue in turn; in Den Gamle By, seventy-five old houses were brought from all over the country and rebuilt as a town where every street is a different decade; and on the harbour a new quarter of white towers stands like a stranded iceberg, which is its name.

The traveller walks the rainbow at ARoS and then the collection under it; spends a morning in Den Gamle By, where the shops sell what they sold in 1927 and 1974; wanders the Latin Quarter's cobbles for lunch and the river's terraces for the evening; visits Dokk1, the library on the quay that the whole city uses as a living room; takes the bus south to Moesgaard, the museum sunk into a hill where the Grauballe Man lies as he was found in the bog; and, in summer, swims from the beach at Den Permanente, ten minutes from the centre.

The Guide's honesty: Aarhus is compact, cycling and calm, and its pleasures are the Danish kind — design, daylight, coffee, a good museum, dinner at seven —; prices are Danish and the lunch is the better bargain; the trains from Copenhagen take three hours across the bridge and the country; the festival week at the end of August is the one time the city is loud; and the smallest big city's welcome is proportionate — genuine, unhurried and pleased that you came this far.