Iconic Capitals & Towns of the Baltic

Board Le Champlain in Copenhagen for an early evening departure. May in Copenhagen is the finest month in the city: the long Scandinavian evenings, the Tivoli Gardens in full spring operation and the canals at Nyhavn lined with the colours the city is famous for. If time allows before embarkation, the SMK National Gallery of Denmark holds the finest collection of Danish Golden Age painting in the world.

Gudhjem is a fishing village on the north coast of Bornholm, the Danish island set in the southern Baltic far from the Danish mainland and closer to Sweden and Germany than to Copenhagen. The island has a character entirely its own: the round medieval churches unique to Bornholm, built as combined places of worship and fortresses against Baltic piracy, are the most unusual ecclesiastical architecture in Scandinavia. The smokehouse tradition at Hasle, where the local herrings have been cold-smoked over alder wood since the 19th century, gives the island’s food culture its defining flavour. The island’s cycle paths, running through farmland and along the cliff coast, give the finest ground-level perspective on Bornholm’s granite and green interior.

Gdansk is the most historically significant port city on the Baltic and one of the most visually dramatic. The Long Market, Dluga Street and the Great Armoury give the Hanseatic trading city its golden age character, the amber-coloured facades of the patrician houses rebuilt in exact detail after wartime destruction. The European Solidarity Centre, built on the site of the Lenin Shipyard where the Solidarity trade union movement began in August 1980 and where the transformation of Eastern Europe effectively started, is the finest single museum in Poland. The included Polish classical music concert in the evening is the most distinctive named shore experience on any Ponant Baltic page reviewed — the specificity of the venue and the programme distinguishes it from a generic cultural excursion.

Visby is the finest preserved Hanseatic town in Scandinavia and the most complete medieval walled city in the Baltic. The 3.4-kilometre ring wall with its 44 towers, built between the 11th and 14th centuries and largely intact, encloses a UNESCO World Heritage town of cobblestone lanes, rose gardens growing between the ruins of medieval churches and the Stora Torget square that has been the commercial centre of the island since the Viking Age. Le Champlain anchors off and the tender operates to the town. May in Visby means the roses are not yet in bloom — that happens in summer — but the evening light at this latitude in mid-May lasts until 9pm and the town at dusk has a quality that the summer tourist season cannot replicate.

Stockholm announces itself from the water as one of the most beautifully sited capitals in the world, built across 14 islands at the point where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic. Le Champlain overnights here and the two days give the city genuine time. The included Vasa Museum visit is the right anchor for the first day: the Vasa, a 17th-century warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 and was raised almost perfectly intact in 1961, is the most remarkable single museum object in Scandinavia. The Gamla Stan old town, with the Royal Palace and the narrow lanes of the medieval city, and the Djurgården island’s museums give the afternoon its full range.

A second full day in Stockholm and the ship still at the quay. The Fotografiska photography museum on Södermalm, one of the finest photography institutions in the world, and the ABBA Museum for those who want it give the morning two entirely different cultural registers. The Skansen open-air museum, the world’s first and still the finest, assembles traditional Swedish buildings from across the country on a hillside above the city. The Millesgården sculpture garden on the island of Lidingö gives the afternoon its most unusual perspective on Stockholm. The long May evening in the city, with the waterfront restaurants at full spring operation, closes the Stockholm days properly.

Saaremaa is Estonia’s largest island and its most quietly rewarding. The island was closed to all foreign visitors during the Soviet period until 1989, a restriction that paradoxically preserved it: the windmills, the limestone village churches and the thatched farmsteads of the interior have a completeness that more accessible Estonian landscapes lack. Kuressaare, the island’s capital, is built around a 14th-century episcopal castle, the best-preserved medieval fortress in the Baltic States. The Kaali meteorite crater lake, created by an impact around 1500 BC and preserved in a landscape of juniper meadows, is the most unusual single natural site accessible from any port on this itinerary.

Tallinn’s UNESCO-listed Old Town is the finest preserved medieval city in Northern Europe, its limestone walls, towers and Gothic church spires rising above the lower town’s merchant quarter and the upper town’s administrative heart. The included walking tour gives the essential framework: the Raekoja Plats, the 15th-century Town Hall, the Toompea hill with the Nevsky Cathedral and the Alexander Nevsky Church, and the viewing platforms that give the finest elevated view of the red-tiled rooftops and the Baltic beyond. Tallinn in May means the summer crowds have not arrived and the city operates at its own unhurried pace.

Le Champlain arrives in Helsinki and the Baltic voyage concludes in the Finnish capital, a city that repays even a single morning’s attention. The Market Square on the waterfront, with the Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral on the hill above, gives Helsinki its most immediately distinctive view. The Helsinki Cathedral in the Senate Square, the Temppeliaukio Rock Church carved directly into a granite outcrop and the Ateneum art museum’s collection of Finnish Golden Age painting give the final hours their character. Eight nights have traced the Baltic coastline from Denmark through Poland, Sweden and the Estonian islands to Finland. Transfer to Helsinki Airport for your flights home.