Valbyparken, The North Sea Islands Travel Guide

From City Landfill to Protected Green Refuge

Valbyparken stretches between the districts of Valby and Vesterbro/Kongens Enghave and is today recognized as Copenhagen’s largest park, covering more than 60 hectares of reclaimed land near the harbour. The area was once Valby Common and served as a municipal landfill in the early 20th century before being transformed into a public park and opened in 1939. Its flat expanses, long sightlines and wide paths still hint at that engineered past, but decades of planting and careful planning have softened the lines into a generous landscape of lawns, groves and garden rooms.The park gained official protected status in the 1960s, securing its role as a permanent green lung for the growing city. That protection helped preserve old oak trees, open grazing areas and the shoreline, and it allowed the city to add new layers—gardens, play spaces, sports zones—without losing the essential feeling of openness. Today Valbyparken functions both as everyday backyard for nearby neighbourhoods and as a destination in its own right for anyone seeking big skies and breathing space.

Themed Gardens and a Sea of Roses

One of Valbyparken’s most distinctive features is its collection of circular theme gardens, laid out like a necklace across the central part of the park. Each garden follows its own concept, from a fruit orchard and herb plot to a kitchen garden, water garden and even a space designed with accessibility for visitors with disabilities in mind. Together they create a kind of outdoor botanic gallery, easy to wander between and inviting at different times of year as various plants come into leaf or bloom.The rose garden is the park’s showpiece: a perfect circle ringed by clipped hedges and planted with thousands of rose bushes in neatly arranged beds. In high summer the air here can be heady with fragrance, and the geometry of the space adds a quiet formality that contrasts with the rougher lawns and meadows nearby. Elsewhere, more whimsical spaces—such as gardens inspired by storytelling and ornamental plant collections—reward slow exploration and make the park as much about horticulture as about open grass.

Shoreline, Meadows and Urban Wildlife

Along the park’s southern edge, paths lead toward the water and a small beach-like stretch facing the broad canal that connects to Øresund. Here you can feel the wind coming in over the harbour, watch small boats pass and look across to low, marshy islands that hint at the wider coastal landscape. A low cliffed edge in places gives slightly elevated views over the sea channel, making this a surprisingly maritime corner of the city.Behind the shoreline, Valbyparken shifts between mown lawns and wilder pockets of vegetation. Grazing areas and rough grass support insects and birds, while scattered older trees create perches for common garden species and waterfowl that move between the canals and the park interior. This mix of cultivated and semi‑wild character makes the area appealing for casual birdwatching as well as for those simply interested in seeing how nature is woven into an urban setting.

Playgrounds, Sports and Everyday Life Outdoors

Valbyparken is also a large outdoor playground in the broadest sense. There are traditional playgrounds, including a popular nature‑themed play area built from timber and natural materials, where children can climb, balance and dig. Nearby, broad lawns and simple amphitheatre‑like slopes lend themselves to informal games, kite flying and lounging on blankets in the sun.Further across the park, you will find football pitches, marked paths for runners and plenty of space for frisbees and casual games. A disc golf course winds between trees and open ground, adding a playful, low‑key sporting element that attracts both locals and visitors. The park’s wide, mostly level network of paths works well for walkers, runners, cyclists and prams, and the sheer size of the place means you can often find a quieter corner even on busy days.

Festivals, Gatherings and Seasonal Atmosphere

Beyond daily recreation, Valbyparken doubles as a major outdoor event space. Large one‑day festivals and concerts periodically transform sections of the park into stages and audience lawns, taking advantage of the open terrain and relative distance from densely built streets. On those days, the atmosphere shifts to something closer to a temporary village, with music carrying across the grass and clusters of people gathering beneath flags and light rigs.The mood changes with the seasons as well. In spring, the theme gardens and young leaves draw people into the park’s more intimate spaces. Summer is about picnics, festivals and late‑evening walks along the water. Autumn brings colour to the older trees and quieter paths for reflective strolls. Even in winter, when the wind is sharp off the canal, the openness of Valbyparken offers stark, wide horizons and a reminder that Copenhagen is a coastal city, shaped by water and weather as much as by bricks and stone.