Esbjerg's sights cluster in two places: the compact, gridded town centre with its turn-of-the-century redbrick buildings and the harbour-front district to the north-west, where the city looks out across Ho Bay. The town centre has the city's pleasant central square (Torvet), the eccentric Esbjerg Water Tower, several solid museums, and a Jørn Utzon concert hall — enough to fill a long morning. Walk or cycle four kilometres north along the coast to reach the giant white "Men at Sea" sculpture, the Fisheries Museum with its seal pool, and a beached lightship turned into a museum.
This is a young city by Danish standards — Esbjerg was only founded in 1868 to give Denmark a North Sea port after the loss of Schleswig — so do not come looking for medieval lanes. What you get instead is a confident piece of late-nineteenth-century planning: wide streets, civic buildings with character, and a working port that still hauls in fish and serves the offshore wind industry.