Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Listen first. Beneath the gallery talk, you may catch the soft rush of the sea and the wind moving through old beech trees. Underfoot, the floor changes from smooth tile to warm wood to gravel. Light falls through tall glass from more than one side. Before you see a single painting, the place asks you to slow down. Welcome to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, on the coast north of Copenhagen, a short ride south of Helsingør.

First, a small surprise about the name. This is a Danish museum, and it has nothing to do with the American state. The name comes from the nineteenth-century villa that still forms the entrance. Its first owner, a man named Alexander Brun, was married three times. All three of his wives, so the story goes, were called Louise. He named the house in their honour, and the name stayed when the property became a museum.

The museum opened in 1958. Its founder was Knud W. Jensen, a businessman with a deep love of art and literature. His idea was simple but unusual for its time. He did not want a grand temple where people whisper and feel small. He wanted a place where art, architecture and landscape sit together, and where a visitor can wander, rest and come back again. Much of what you feel here comes from that first idea.

Jensen gave the building work to two young Danish architects, Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert. They walked the grounds for a long time before they drew anything. Then they designed low, modest pavilions in whitewashed brick, with dark wooden ceilings and red tile floors. Long glass corridors connect the rooms. The influences came from Japanese houses and from Californian modernism, but the result feels completely Scandinavian: calm, plain, and close to nature.

As you walk the corridors, notice how the building never shouts. The walls stay low. The roofs stay flat. Again and again, a glass wall opens onto a tree, a lawn or a slice of water. The architects did not cut down the old trees. They bent the path around them instead. So the route through the museum twists and turns, and every corner gives you a new view outside.

Over the decades, the museum grew in stages. New wings came in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and later. Some galleries were placed partly underground, tucked into the slope, so the buildings would not block the view of the coast. If you walk the whole circuit, you move in a large loop around the park. Many visitors do not realise this until they suddenly arrive back where they started.

Inside, the collection covers modern and contemporary art from the years after the Second World War up to today. The museum is also known for its large temporary exhibitions, which change through the year. One visit might bring a major painter, another a photographer or an architect. Because of this, no two visits feel quite the same. Even regular visitors from Copenhagen come back many times, and each time the rooms show something different.

One room deserves a slow pause. In the older part of the museum, a tall gallery holds slender figures by Alberto Giacometti, the Swiss sculptor. His thin bronze people stand and walk with rough, scraped surfaces. Behind them, a large window looks out to a small lake garden with plants and water. The thin figures against the green outside... it is one of the quiet moments that many people remember long after they leave.

Here is a second surprise for many visitors. Somewhere in the museum, a small dark room holds a work by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It is one of her infinity rooms. You step inside, the door closes, and mirrors and water reflect tiny coloured lights in every direction. For a short moment, the walls seem to disappear. There is often a queue, and you only have a little time inside, so take it slowly.

Now step outside into the sculpture park. The lawns slope gently down toward the sea. Among the trees and on the grass, you will find works by artists such as Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Jean Arp and Joan Miró. Moore's heavy, rounded forms rest on the grass as if they grew there. Calder's metal shapes stand out against the sky. Here, sculpture and landscape are meant to be seen together, in every kind of weather.

Walk to the edge of the lawn and look across the water. This narrow strait is the Øresund, the sound between Denmark and Sweden. On a clear day, the Swedish coast is plainly visible on the other side. Ships move slowly through the channel. The light here changes all the time, from silver to grey to deep blue. Many people find this view as memorable as anything hanging on the walls inside.

Louisiana is also a place for families and for ideas. The museum has a children's wing where young visitors can draw, build and make things inspired by the exhibitions. It hosts concerts, talks and a well-known literature festival, which brings writers from around the world. The museum also runs Louisiana Channel, an online series of filmed interviews with artists, writers and architects. So the conversation here does not stop at the museum gate.

Before you leave, many visitors stop at the café terrace. From there, the lawn runs down toward the sound, and on a fine day people sit outside with coffee and look at the water. Inside, the shop offers books, prints and Danish design. It is worth pausing here not to buy, but simply to sit. This is exactly the kind of slow, easy moment that Jensen hoped his museum would give people.

So take one last look around you. Notice the white brick, the old trees, the wide grey water beyond the lawn. Notice how quiet it is, even with other people near. As you walk back through the old villa at the entrance, think of the three women named Louise, whose name now belongs to this whole place. And listen once more for the sea... it will still be there as you go.