Refshaleøen, Copenhagen: shipyard bones, sauna steam and serious appetite

Refshaleøen begins with a smell: salt water, hot metal, frying oil, and, in summer, the faint sweet smoke of bonfires on the harbour edge. This was where Copenhagen built ships until 1996, where Burmeister & Wain launched supertankers off reclaimed land and then moved on, leaving behind a landscape of cracked concrete, weathered sheds and gantry cranes that still look as if they might start working again if you asked nicely. The city could have smoothed it all over. Instead, it let the place keep its rough edges, and that is why Refshaleøen feels so alive now — not polished, not precious, but full of people who have made the detour on purpose.

What Refshaleøen is known for

Two words do a lot of work here: shipyard and appetite. Refshaleøen is the kind of neighbourhood that tells its story through what it used to make and what it now feeds. The old B&W shipyard is the anchor, but the real drama is the afterlife. In the empty industrial buildings, Copenhagen has staged one of its most interesting experiments: high culture, low-key harbour life, and a food scene that runs from paper tray to tasting theatre without changing postcode.

At the casual end sits Reffen, the open-air street-food market built from shipping containers and pitched as the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. At the other end are the kitchens that made the island famous far beyond Copenhagen: Alchemist, with its six-hour, 50-“impression” spectacle, and Noma, back in 2025 for a new run of “twelve seasons” under new leadership, with René Redzepi as creative director. Both chose this island for the same reason the city’s artists and drink-makers did: the space. There is room here for big ideas, odd shapes and a little industrial theatre.

The other defining note is steam. Refshaleøen has become Copenhagen’s harbour-swim-and-sauna district, where the day can revolve around a cold plunge, a hot bench and a towel flung over a bike. La Banchina and CopenHot have turned the edge of the island into a place for people who like their leisure with a bit of weather in it. Add Copenhagen Contemporary, which fills the former welding hall with room-sized installation art, and the island starts to read like a working sketch of modern Copenhagen: practical, creative, slightly scrappy, and not especially interested in your idea of pretty.

Where to eat & drink

Start at Reffen, because almost everyone does, and because it is hard not to be swept up by the scale of it. Reffen sits at Refshalevej 167A and opens in its main season from mid-March to late September, with food stalls daily from 11:30 to 21:30 and bars running later, till 1am on Fridays and Saturdays. It is a sprawl of container kitchens, benches, beer taps and the kind of easygoing noise that only happens when people arrive hungry and unhurried. One stall will hand you stone-baked pizza, another Thai curry, another Argentinian empanadas or dumplings, and somewhere in the middle there will be a gourmet Nordic hotdog that knows exactly how far it is from a normal hotdog and is pleased with itself about it.

This is not the place for bargain-hunting in the strict sense, though you can absolutely graze a whole meal across three stalls for what one central Copenhagen sit-down might cost. It is more a place for drift than precision: a beer, then a snack, then another beer, then one more round because the DJ has started and the light has gone soft over the water. In November and December Reffen becomes Reffen Skøjteøen, an ice rink with bonfires and lights, which is a charming reminder that the island refuses to vanish entirely when the weather turns mean.

Inside Reffen, Mikkeller Baghaven is the serious drinker’s reason to linger. This is Mikkeller’s barrel-ageing cellar for wild ales, saisons and spontaneously fermented beer, poured across a wall of taps and best enjoyed on the sun-trap terrace over the water. The view back to the city and Amalienborg gives the whole thing a slightly improbable elegance, as if a brewery had briefly decided to become a postcard.

For a proper meal, Restaurant Aure at Charlotte Amalies Bastion is the polished counterpoint to all that container-casual energy. It sits in an 18th-century gunpowder house and earned a Michelin star just 81 days after opening, which is the sort of fact that sounds made up until you realise the kitchen is simply very good at making a statement. Chef Nicky Arentsen cooks produce-led food with the Opera House in view, and the setting does a lot of quiet heavy lifting. It is one of those rooms that makes you sit up a little straighter.

La Banchina, at Refshalevej 141A, is the island in miniature: a 16-seat harbour café, natural-wine bar and boathouse restaurant with a swim pier and wood-fired sauna, no reservations, and a menu that changes daily. Come for the seafood and vegetable plates, the coffee, the baked goods and the low-intervention wine; stay because the water is right there and the whole place feels like it was designed by someone who understands that Copenhageners will happily eat lunch in a towel if the sun is behaving.

Lille Bakery is the morning answer to all this evening indulgence. Hidden in a Refshaleøen warehouse, it has built a cult following on sourdough and pastries, especially the rose-scented blomster flower bun, which people talk about with the sort of reverence usually reserved for old family recipes. It opens Wednesday to Sunday from 8 to 17, which means the correct move is to get there before lunch, before the good things disappear and before you start pretending you only came for coffee.

And then there are the big names that turned the island into a global talking point. Alchemist is Rasmus Munk’s two-Michelin-star, six-hour, 50-impression dining spectacle under a planetarium dome — a place of ambition, performance and very long meals. Noma reopened in 2025 for “twelve seasons” under new leadership, with René Redzepi as creative director, and remains the kind of reservation people plan around like a wedding. Both are booked far ahead and cost accordingly, but they matter here because they helped define the idea that a former shipyard could become one of the world’s most interesting dining districts.

Going out

Refshaleøen does not do nightlife in the tidy, city-centre sense. There is no strip of clubs, no polished parade of cocktail bars. The evening is more likely to begin with a drink and a view, then slip into a second drink because the light has not quite gone and the harbour is doing that silvery thing it does in Copenhagen when the day refuses to end properly.

Mikkeller Baghaven is the classic sundowner: wild ale on the terrace, the water in front, the city across it, and that feeling that you have arrived somewhere just as the day is loosening its grip. La Banchina is even softer, in the best possible way — natural wine on the pier as the light drops over the harbour, swimmers still coming up the ladder, the room inside getting smaller as the outside gets bigger.

Reffen carries the energy later into the night in season, when the food crowd thins and the bars keep going till 1am on Fridays and Saturdays. There are DJ sets, concerts and festivals through spring to autumn, and on a programmed night the place can genuinely buzz. It is worth checking the listings before you come, because the difference between a busy summer evening and a quiet off-season Tuesday is dramatic enough to feel like two different neighbourhoods.

If you want something more theatrical than a drink, EUROPA stages physical theatre in a big tent on the island. That detail matters: Refshaleøen has always been a place for temporary structures and temporary certainties, and the tent suits it. The whole district has the air of a site where people are still trying things out, which is a far better energy than having everything settled and signed off.

Things to do / what to see

The obvious daytime move is to swim, steam and repeat. La Banchina has the simplest version: a small swim pier and a tiny wood-fired sauna that you book for private sessions. They sell out, so if you want the full harbour ritual, plan ahead. There is something very Copenhagen about this arrangement — no fuss, no spa pomp, just a ladder into the water and a hot room waiting for you when you come back up.

CopenHot, at Refshalevej 195, takes the same idea and scales it up. This is an outdoor spa of fire-heated hot tubs, saunas and cold plunge pools, wood-heated and close to CO2-neutral, with social Hot Days tickets, private tubs and even a harbour-cruise-plus-soak combo. It is open year-round, which makes it one of the rare places on the island that promises good weather to the people who arrive without it.

For culture, Copenhagen Contemporary is the place to go when you want scale. It fills the vast former B&W welding hall with large-scale installation art — room-swallowing pieces that need a hall this size — and adds talks, workshops and a design shop. You feel the building before you understand the work. That is part of the pleasure.

The island’s drink-makers are worth a detour too. Copenhagen Distillery runs whisky, gin and aquavit tastings and spirit-making workshops in a warehouse, with bus 37 stopping at the door. Empirical, the flavour-first distillery founded by ex-Noma alumni, offers weekend tours and tastings of its uncategorisable spirits. One is more classical, one more experimental, and both make sense here because Refshaleøen has always been a place where people are allowed to chase a process for a bit longer than usual.

And then there is the simple act of moving through the place. Rent a bike or arrive by harbour bus and follow the waterfront, taking in the cranes, the sheds and the water as you go. Just off the island’s tip rises CopenHill, the ski slope and hiking path built on top of a waste-to-energy plant. It is a short ride away, but visually it belongs to the same Copenhagen instinct: take something functional, make it public, and give it a slightly absurd second life.

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Shopping & markets

Refshaleøen is not where you come to shop in the conventional sense. There is no high street, no parade of boutiques, no place to spend an afternoon comparing lamp shades under flattering lighting. What there is instead are things to eat, drink and carry away in a paper bag or a bottle tote.

A bottle from Copenhagen Distillery or Empirical makes sense here, as does a rare release from Mikkeller Baghaven if you know your beer and want to take a little of the island home with you. Lille Bakery is the obvious stop for sourdough and pastries, especially if you are the sort of person who considers a loaf a souvenir. Copenhagen Contemporary has a small design shop, which is exactly the sort of restrained retail one expects from a neighbourhood that prefers concrete to commerce.

Reffen is the closest thing to a real market, and through the summer season it also runs weekend markets alongside the food stalls, with vintage clothing, small-maker and craft stalls mixed in. It is browsing-as-atmosphere rather than a place to do serious shopping. That is fine. Refshaleøen is better when you treat it as a place to consume time, not stuff.

Where to stay in Refshaleøen

Be practical: almost nobody stays on Refshaleøen, because there is essentially no accommodation on the island itself. This is a day-and-evening district, not a sleepover district, and that is not a flaw. It is simply the way the place works best. Come over for lunch, art, a sauna, dinner, a drink, maybe another drink, then go back across the water to bed.

The smartest base is Christianshavn, the canal-laced district right across the water — a 10-minute bike ride or a couple of harbour-bus stops from Refshaleøen — because it lets you wander over for the evening and drift home without making a production of it. Indre By, Nyhavn and Vesterbro also work well if you want more classic Copenhagen streetscapes and a proper hotel base, while still keeping the island within easy reach.

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If you want the shortest possible commute to the saunas and street food, choose Christianshavn and the harbourfront. That way the island becomes what it should be: an outing, not an obligation.

Getting around

Getting to Refshaleøen is part of the pleasure, and the nicest approach is by water. The yellow harbour buses, lines 991 and 992, stop at Refshaleøen on a normal transit ticket and glide you past the Opera House on the way. Do that at least once. It makes the island feel properly maritime, which is fitting for a place built on shipbuilding bones.

By land, bus 2A runs onto the island from central Copenhagen via Christianshavn, and bus 37 serves the Copenhagen Distillery end. On a bike, which is how many locals do it, it is about a 10-minute ride from Nyhavn, and the flat Harbour Circle cycle-and-walk path loops out this way too. The route is scenic, straightforward and mercifully free of drama.

Once you are on the island, expect to walk or pedal between the various pockets rather than stumble across everything on one neat street. Refshaleøen is flat and walkable, but a little sprawling, which is part of its charm. There is no metro here, so plan your return. The nearest station is back in Christianshavn, and Copenhagen Airport is roughly 20 to 30 minutes away, most easily via the metro from there.

The simple version is this: bike or harbour-bus in, wander, eat, swim, drink, maybe stay for a show, then head back before the last services thin out. Refshaleøen rewards people who are willing to make the effort. That has always been the point.