Bornholms Museum

Bornholms Museum in Rønne is the island's principal cultural-history museum and the best single introduction to why this granite outpost in the Baltic feels unlike anywhere else in Denmark. Housed in a handsome building a few minutes' walk from the ferry harbour, it gathers under one roof more than ten thousand years of Bornholm life, told through objects that were dug from the island's own soil.

The archaeological collection is the star. Bornholm has proved extraordinarily rich in prehistoric finds, and the museum displays Stone Age tools, Bronze Age weapons and, most famously, the tiny gold-foil figures known as guldgubber — stamped images of embracing couples and cloaked figures that were offered at Iron Age cult sites. More have been found on Bornholm, especially at the Sorte Muld site near Svaneke, than anywhere else in Scandinavia, and seeing them in their home museum gives them a context no national collection can match.

From prehistory the galleries move through the Viking and medieval centuries, when Bornholm's round churches were raised as fortified sanctuaries, and on into the age of sail. Rønne was long one of the busiest ports in the Baltic, and the maritime rooms are full of ship models, navigation instruments and paintings of the vessels that carried Bornholmers across Europe and beyond. Other sections cover the island's clockmakers — the famous Bornholm grandfather clocks — its ceramic and glass traditions, and everyday domestic life in fishing villages and farms.

A sobering permanent display deals with the Soviet bombing of Rønne and Nexø in May 1945 and the months of Soviet occupation that followed, a chapter of the Second World War that many mainland Danes barely know. The museum handles it with restraint, using photographs and personal objects to convey how the war ended late and hard for this exposed island.

The experience is comfortably paced for a family: around ninety minutes covers the highlights, longer if you linger over the maritime and clock collections. The building is largely accessible, with a lift to the upper floors and a small shop selling books on island history and locally made crafts. Staff are knowledgeable and happy to point you towards the sites the finds came from.

The best time to visit is summer, when all galleries and the seasonal special exhibitions are open, though the museum stays welcoming in the shoulder seasons too. Because it sits in the heart of old Rønne, only a five-minute walk from the harbour and the ferry terminal, it makes an ideal first stop when you step off the boat — a way to read the whole island before you set out to explore its round churches, smokehouses and rocky north coast.