Den Gamle By – The Old Town Museum, Aarhus

A Town-Sized Time Capsule in the Heart of Aarhus

Den Gamle By, literally “The Old Town”, is an open‑air museum laid out as a full Danish market town inside the Aarhus Botanical Gardens. Instead of isolated galleries, you step straight into cobbled streets, town squares and narrow alleys framed by historic buildings relocated from all over Denmark. Many date back to the 17th and 18th centuries and have been dismantled, transported and re‑erected here piece by piece to preserve authentic details. The result feels less like a museum and more like a small town where time has fractured. Around one corner you find a mill stream and half‑timbered warehouses, around the next a 20th‑century shopfront or a jazz bar from the early 2000s. Gardens, courtyards and the backdrop of the surrounding park add greenery and birdsong to the constant sense of discovery.

Streets from the Age of Hans Christian Andersen

The oldest quarter evokes a provincial Danish town before 1900, roughly the era of Hans Christian Andersen. Here you wander past crooked timber frames, tiled roofs and painted facades that lean over cobbled lanes. Inside, interiors are furnished as they would have been when merchants, craftsmen and townsfolk lived and worked in these rooms. Workshops demonstrate traditional crafts, from baking and brewing to carpentry and printing, often using period tools and methods. An old schoolroom, a customs booth, a watermill and the atmospheric Helsingør Theatre hint at the institutions that shaped town life. Kitchen gardens outside some houses supply herbs, fruit and heirloom vegetables used in the site’s own bakeries and kitchens.

Modernity Arrives: Cars, Shopfronts and Telephones

In the 1927 quarter the townscape suddenly feels wider and brighter. Streetlights, pavements and overhead telephone lines appear, and vintage cars are parked outside formal brick buildings. Here you can step into a hardware store, a bookshop, a soap house, a post office and a functioning telephone exchange, all staged with original fittings and products from the interwar years. A reconstructed car dealership with its own workshop showcases gleaming early automobiles, spare‑parts counters and engine tools, capturing the excitement of motoring’s early days. Apartment interiors reveal how everyday life changed as consumer goods became more accessible, from radios and electric lamps to new styles of furniture and decoration.

From Hippies to Welfare Denmark and Into the 21st Century

Further on, streets from the 1970s and early 21st century bring the story of Danish urban life almost up to the present. In the 1970s neighborhood, graffiti‑marked backyards, a moped workshop and backyard toilets with period poetry sit beside a kindergarten, convenience store and hairdresser. Apartments show contrasting lives: a nuclear family, a communal collective, a hippie couple and a single mother, each interior carefully staged down to wallpaper, record collections and kitchen cupboards. On Queen Margrethe’s Street, set around 2014, you encounter a familiar high street with a tanning salon, mini‑market, cash machine, pizzeria and the legendary Bent J pub. Even a video rental store and electronic games recall very recent history, underlining how quickly everyday culture changes. These newer streets highlight social diversity, including contemporary family models, and invite reflection on what “our time” will look like to future generations.

Living History, Food Traditions and Practicalities

Den Gamle By is a living museum: from spring through much of the year, staff in historical dress chop wood, bake, tend gardens, run shops and engage visitors in character. Horse‑drawn carriage rides, seasonal events and special exhibitions add further layers. Eateries scattered through the town serve traditional Danish dishes in period‑styled interiors, from an 18th‑century tavern cellar to a guesthouse with rooms furnished in styles from around 1900 to the mid‑20th century. The site is extensive and best explored at an unhurried pace, with frequent stops to step inside houses and exhibitions. Paths include cobbled surfaces and some uneven ground, but there are accessible routes, several restrooms and baby‑changing facilities, and mobility scooters can be borrowed by prior arrangement. Combined with the surrounding botanical gardens, Den Gamle By can easily fill a substantial part of a day for anyone curious about how Danish cities and everyday lives have evolved over four centuries.