Copenhagen's parks and gardens, and where to eat first

Copenhagen is a city you see on foot, and a surprising amount of that walking happens in gardens. A Renaissance king's park, a botanical garden under glass, a working cemetery that doubles as a neighbourhood lawn, and a landscape park with a zoo wall running through it are all inside or just outside the line of the old ramparts. None of them takes a whole day. All of them are better with something to eat beforehand, because the gardens themselves are not where the food is. Here is how to put the two together on a short trip.

Start with the geography, because it explains the plan. Copenhagen's green spaces are not one large park on the edge of town but a series of small ones threaded through the city, most of them a walk apart rather than a train ride. That makes them useful as punctuation in a day of sightseeing rather than as a destination in themselves. The practical consequence for a visitor is that you choose the café first and the garden second, since cafés keep hours and most of these gardens are public ground rather than ticketed attractions.

The densest pair sits in the old town. The Botanical Garden is ten hectares of planting around a Victorian glasshouse, free to walk through, and directly across one street from it stands Rosenborg Castle and the King's Garden, a Renaissance summer castle with the crown jewels in its cellar and the city's favourite park spread out in front of it. You can see both in one morning without getting on a bus. Nørreport, the station at the corner of the Botanical Garden, is also the most useful starting point for breakfast. Kalaset is on Vendersgade, a few streets from the gate, and Atelier September is on Gothersgade, the street that runs along the southern edge of both gardens. Both are in Indre By, so you can walk from the table to the greenhouse.

The one that surprises visitors most is in Nørrebro. Assistens Cemetery is a working graveyard, with Hans Christian Andersen among the graves, and it is also the neighbourhood's park, used for reading, walking and sitting in the sun. Treating it as both at once is normal here, although it is worth noticing which of the two a given corner is being used for before you settle on a bench. Jægersborggade runs along one side of it, and that street is the reason to come in the morning rather than the afternoon. Coffee Collective at number 10 is one of the names that made Copenhagen a coffee city, and GRØD is further up the same street at number 50. If you are arriving along the main road instead, Andersen & Maillard is on Nørrebrogade.

West of the centre, Frederiksberg Gardens is the most deliberately picturesque of the four: a romantic landscape park with canals, a hilltop palace and the zoo's elephants visible over the wall. Frederiksberg around it is broad avenues and a slower café rhythm than the centre, which suits the park. Baryl Frederiksberg on Holger Danskes Vej is the closest of the cafés we cover to the garden, with brunch plates, coffee and a seasonal menu in a quiet room. For bread rather than a sit-down plate, Hart Bageri is on Gammel Kongevej, on the way in from the city side.

Two more pieces of green are worth knowing because of where they sit. The Lakes, the chain of rectangular water along the old edge of the city, make the best flat walk in Copenhagen, and Cafe Livingstone on Sortedam Dossering is on the path itself, at the point where Østerbro begins. Further north, Kastellet is a star-shaped seventeenth-century fortress, still military and still intact, with grass ramparts you can follow the whole way around. It is also the last green thing before the waterfront, which is why it belongs to the walk out to the Little Mermaid rather than to a morning of its own.

Season decides which of these is worth a detour and which is simply pleasant. In summer the gardens are the day. In late autumn and winter they are a stretch of air between two indoor stops, and the light goes early, so the morning is the part of the day to spend outside. If the forecast is against you, a wet morning is better spent in the old town, where the museums and the cafés are a few streets apart.

With two days, the simplest version is one garden per morning and one neighbourhood per afternoon. Take the Botanical Garden and Rosenborg on the first day, since they are nearest the centre and nearest the trains, then either Assistens Cemetery or Frederiksberg Gardens on the second, depending on which side of the city you are sleeping on. Our weekend food itinerary lays out the eating half of the same two days, the best brunch in Copenhagen is the short list across the whole city, and brunch in Østerbro covers the calmer end of the lake walk.