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Around 35 kilometres north of Copenhagen, just beyond the city’s design-saturated rhythms, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art offers one of Europe’s most compelling encounters between art, architecture and landscape. Set on the Øresund coast with Sweden shimmering across the water, this quietly radical institution embodies the vision of its founder, Knud W. Jensen, who believed art should be experienced as part of life rather than sealed away from it.
Copenhagen itself is a city built on elegant contradiction. Industrial rigour softens into domestic warmth, where functional modernism coexists with the comforting rituals of hygge. Royal palaces sit unselfconsciously beside contemporary galleries, while a Viking past gives way to one of the world’s most contented urban cultures. Louisiana continues this conversation, extending it beyond the city into a cultural landscape shaped as much by nature as by design.
At the museum, contrast becomes choreography. Slender Giacometti figures stand before expansive glazing, their fragile silhouettes set against a constantly shifting coastal horizon. Henry Moore’s monumental bronze forms rise from manicured lawns with effortless authority, while Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored installation pulls visitors into an immersive cosmos of reflected light. The surrounding landscape is never a backdrop; it is an active participant, framed, borrowed and reintroduced as living artwork.
Notably, Louisiana’s collection focuses almost entirely on international modern and contemporary art. Jensen conceived the museum as a window through which Danes could engage with global creative movements. Today, that outward-looking ambition has made Louisiana one of Scandinavia’s most visited cultural destinations. Danish identity reveals itself not through the art on the walls, but through the architecture itself: restrained Scandinavian minimalism, pale timber, glass-lined corridors and an ever-present dialogue with daylight.
Designed in collaboration with Danish architects Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo, the museum unfolds as a sequence of low-slung pavilions connected by glazed walkways. Jensen famously described the experience as akin to taking a stroll in the park, where the act of viewing art feels almost secondary to the pleasure of movement, light and spatial flow. Few museums dare to gently usher their visitors onto a pebble beach mid-visit, inviting the sea to complete the sensory journey. Louisiana does so with quiet confidence, reminding us that great art does not compete with nature, but thrives alongside it.
Radical, sometimes political and always on the pulse of Athens’ ever-evolving art scene, The Breeder Gallery is housed in an old ice cream factory, redesigned by architect Aris Zambicos.
Antwerp is one of Europe's cultural hotbeds with historical landmarks and art institutions. And while Antwerp has plenty of those – we turn our focus on the smaller-scale contemporary culture must-sees the Flemish city has to offer.
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Contemporary art continues to find its way into the Alpine villages of Engadin – surely, a reflection of the cosmopolitan and cultured crowd that seizes upon these rural locales each holiday season.
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With an extraordinarily creative mind, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846 – 1923), was known for taking his own approach which can be seen in this revealing museum which showcases his graphic arts, caricatures, ceramics, object design and decoration.
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Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Art reopens – recreated by KAAN architects, the KMSKA holds over 8,400 art pieces dating back to the 14th century onwards.
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New - Papirøen, or Paper Island (next to the Opera) is the newest culture-art space, a must see visit in the harbour of Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen Contemporary have taken over the space, expect artistic installations, street food and creative hubs.
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Príncipe Real is Lisbon’s green crown: palacetes, cedar gardens and design ateliers shape a district of lyrical calm. A cultured quarter where heritage, creativity and elegance drift together beneath jacaranda-lined boulevards.
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From the cliff-carved tombs of Tlos to the ghost village of Kayaköy, trace the soul of ancient Lycia along the Turkish Riviera’s sunlit coastline and mountain-framed archaeological wonders.
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Museion in Bolzano, Italy, strikes a standout cubic pose created in reflective aluminium over five floors. Home to the modern and contemporary art museum designed by architects Krüger Schuberth Vandreike.
Hidden in a small street in Antwerp’s historical centre, where a convent used to be, gallerist Veerle Wenes founded a design gallery that’s known for exploring the fusion between art, design and architecture.
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Alpine altitude meets cultural attitude in Graubünden, where white-cube cool, radical barns and Giacometti’s spectral studio shape Switzerland’s most magnetic collision of art, legacy and mountain air.
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Architecturally deigned buildings, an eclectic museum, library, secret garden and a scientific research institute make up the Lisbon outpost of this Portuguese philanthropy foundation, which is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Get the insider news and lowdown on what we've been up to, where we've been, and who we've met along the way. Be the first to discover new places and get the scoop on our favourites.