Ilimmarfik University Campus, New Herrnhut and the Coastal Boardwalk

Beyond downtown Nuuk and the Old Colonial Harbour, two scenic walks showcase the educational history and everyday coastal life of Greenland's capital: the southern shoreline boardwalk leading toward the eighteenth-century Moravian mission house at New Herrnhut, and the northern tundra headland around Ilimmarfik, the research campus of Greenland's national university.

Ilimmarfik and the University of Greenland (Ilisimatusarfik)

Established in 1987 to provide local higher education in Greenland, Ilisimatusarfik (the University of Greenland) is the territory's only university. After operating for two decades inside the historic mission building at New Herrnhut, the university moved in 2008 to 2009 into the purpose-built Ilimmarfik research complex at the northern end of the Nuussuaq district, designed by Tegnestuen Nuuk and KHR Arkitekter about 700 metres west of Nuuk Airport. Clad in dark timber with broad picture windows angled toward Sermitsiaq Island, the campus serves roughly 205 students across institutes of Greenlandic language, literature and media, cultural and social history, teacher training, journalism, law, business, theology, and Arctic health science, and participates in the circumpolar University of the Arctic network. Ilimmarfik also houses Statistics Greenland, the National Archives of Greenland, and the Groenlandica research collection of the National Library of Greenland (comprising more than 83,000 catalogued items), plus a public canteen looking across the tundra toward the nine-hole Nuuk Golf Course, the world's only Arctic tundra golf course.

New Herrnhut (Nye-Hernhut) Moravian Mission House

Near the southern tip of the Nuuk peninsula stands the red-and-white timber Moravian Brethren Mission House of New Herrnhut (Nye-Hernhut, Kalaallisut: Noorliit). Founded after German Moravian missionaries arrived in 1733 and erected in 1747, the mission drew Greenlanders from along the southeastern coast and served as the parent station for five further Moravian missions across western and southern Greenland until the congregation merged into the Lutheran Church of Denmark in 1900. The 1747 building hosted the inaugural exhibition of the Greenland National Museum in 1965 before becoming the first home of Ilisimatusarfik in 1987, and today houses the Office of the Ombudsman for Inatsisartut.

The Nuuk Coastal Boardwalk

Linking the rocky coves south of Kolonihavnen with the southern residential headlands near New Herrnhut, a raised wooden boardwalk with stepped benches winds over the coastal gneiss outcrops above the tide line. It is the best level walk in the city for spotting summer whales and drifting icebergs offshore or watching the winter aurora borealis away from downtown street lighting.