Denmark · Jutland
Aarhus
A student port where you walk a ring of coloured glass over the rooftops and a whole old Danish town has been reassembled street by street.
Aarhus is Denmark's second city, a compact university port on the east side of Jutland, facing across the bay rather than out at the North Sea. Its landmark is a circle of coloured glass walked around the roof of the art museum, which turns the whole city yellow, then green, then violet as you go. The other set piece is an open-air museum in which whole half-timbered streets from across Denmark have been taken apart, moved here and rebuilt as a working town.
Suggested stay
2–3 days
Language
Danish
Currency
DKK
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Aarhus
The rainbow a circular glass walkway on the art museum roof that recolours the city pane by pane as you walk around it
The old town half-timbered houses brought here from all over Denmark and rebuilt into streets set in different decades, with people working in them
Students a big university in a small city, which is why the bars, the music and the cheap eating punch well above the population
Forest and water the Marselisborg woods run down to swimming beaches a short bus ride south of the centre
Best time to visit
May-Jun, Aug-Sep
15-21° days
56.150° N, 10.213° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Copenhagen
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Weather & when to go to Aarhus
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best May-Jun, Aug-Sep
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Aarhus
Jutland is wet, and Aarhus is wettest and darkest through the cold half of the year, when the weather is grey and blowy rather than snowy. The other honest caveat runs the other way: a lot of what makes the city lively is the students, so it goes noticeably quiet through the summer break, exactly when the weather is at its best.
Top things to do in Aarhus
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ARoS - walk the rainbow on the roof
culture arts 👍 PopularA cube of a museum with a circular walkway of coloured glass built right around its roof, so the city outside changes colour as you go. Below it are Danish golden-age painting, a hall of large installations and a hyper-real crouching boy several metres tall.
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Den Gamle By - the town rebuilt street by street
history 👍 PopularAn open-air museum of some seventy-five half-timbered buildings moved here from across the country and reassembled as a working town, with quarters staged in the 1860s, the 1920s and the 1970s, staffed by people in period dress who will talk to you as though the year is real.
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Moesgaard Museum - the grass roof and the bog body
history 👍 PopularA prehistory museum built into a hillside south of the city with a sloping turf roof people picnic on and slide down. Inside is Grauballe Man, an Iron Age body preserved almost whole by a bog, alongside Viking and Stone Age halls.
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Aarhus Cathedral
historyThe longest and tallest church in Denmark, in brick, with frescoes that were whitewashed over after the Reformation and uncovered again centuries later, and a carved gilded altarpiece by a Lubeck master.
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The Latin Quarter
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedThe oldest streets in the city behind the cathedral: narrow, cobbled, low houses in strong colours, filled with small shops, record stores, wine bars and courtyards. The most pleasant hour in Aarhus is spent here with no plan at all.
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Marselisborg forest, deer park and beaches
nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommendedBeech woods start where the southern suburbs stop and run down to the water, with an enclosed deer park you can walk into, marked forest paths and a string of bathing beaches along the bay, all reachable on a city bus.
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Dokk1 and the harbourfront
culture artsThe public library on the water is a landmark in its own right, with a huge tube of a bell hung inside that rings whenever a baby is born in a city hospital. The promenade outside is where the old container port is being rebuilt as city.
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Aarhus O - the harbour extension
scenicA new quarter on filled land at the harbour mouth, best known for an apartment block cut into white peaks so that every flat sees water, with a harbour bath and salt-water swimming right in the middle of the city.
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Marselisborg Palace park
nature wildlifeThe royal family's summer residence south of the centre, a white villa in a landscaped park with sculpture and rose gardens that opens to the public whenever the family is not staying.
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The Botanical Garden and its glasshouse dome
nature wildlifeBeside the open-air museum, a hillside of themed planting with a domed tropical glasshouse at the bottom, warm and dripping in the middle of a Danish winter and free to walk into.
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The university's yellow-brick campus
culture artsA whole campus built from the 1930s in the same yellow brick with the same steep roofs, laid out over a park with a lake and oaks. It is one of the most admired pieces of twentieth-century Danish architecture and you can simply walk through it.
Best areas to stay in Aarhus
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Midtbyen
First-time visitors $$Cobbled centre around cathedral and Latin Quarter
Explore hotels in Midtbyen →
Frederiksbjerg
Eating & value $$Grid of streets behind the station, eating
Explore hotels in Frederiksbjerg →
Aarhus O
On the water $$$New waterfront blocks and harbour swimming
Explore hotels in Aarhus O →
Trojborg
Students & long stays $Student streets north of the centre
Explore hotels in Trojborg →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Aarhus
Getting to & around Aarhus
Getting there
Trains from Copenhagen take about three hours into the middle of town; the city's own airport is a coach ride up the coast
Flight
Aarhus Airport (AAR)
The airport is out at Tirstrup on the Djursland peninsula, some forty km northeast, with an airport coach meeting flights and running to the city in about fifty minutes. Plenty of visitors never use it: Billund to the southwest carries more international routes, and most arrivals from outside Denmark come through Copenhagen and take the train across the country instead.
Train
Aarhus H
Trains from Copenhagen take around three hours by way of Funen and the Great Belt bridge, with the line carrying on north to Aalborg; the station is in the middle of town
Coach
Aarhus Rutebilstation
Long-distance coaches from Copenhagen, Hamburg and Berlin use the terminal a short walk north of the station
Ferry
Aarhus Havn
A fast ferry crosses from Odden on the Zealand side in a little over an hour, which is the quickest way over from the Copenhagen half of the country with a car
Getting around
Walking
The centre is small: cathedral, Latin Quarter, art museum, station and harbour are all within a few minutes of each other
Free
Bike
Lanes on the main streets and hire bikes in the centre, though Aarhus has hills, which Copenhagen does not
TBC
Light rail
Tram-trains run from the harbourfront through the station and out along the coast north and south
TBC
Bus
The main network, and how you reach the prehistory museum, the deer park and the southern beaches
TBC
Taxi & rideshare
Easy to find at the station and around the Latin Quarter late, though distances are short enough that most people walk
TBC
Day trips from Aarhus
Ebeltoft and Mols Bjerge
Full dayHills & wooden town
A crooked cobbled town of low painted houses with a preserved wooden frigate in dry dock at its harbour, backed by a national park of glacial hills, heath and beech that is the best walking country near the city.
Getting there
bus | car
1 hr 15 min by bus or car east
Silkeborg and the lake district
Full dayLakes & heather hills
Denmark's lake country, where an old coal-fired paddle steamer still runs up the water to the hill with the memorial tower on top. The town museum holds Tollund Man, whose face survived two thousand years in a bog and is the reason people come.
Getting there
train | ferry | car
1 hr by train west
Jelling
Half dayViking rune stones
Two rune stones between huge burial mounds, one raised by Harald Bluetooth to announce that he had made the Danes Christian. It is treated as Denmark's birth certificate, and the outline of an enormous ship-shaped stone setting is marked out around it.
Getting there
train | car
1 hr 30 min by train southwest
Aalborg and Lindholm Hoje
Full dayRiver city & Viking graves
A city on the Limfjord with a half-timbered merchant quarter, a waterfront rebuilt in concrete and glass, and on the hill across the water a Viking and Iron Age burial ground of several hundred graves outlined in standing stones.
Getting there
train | car
1 hr 15 min by train north
A little history of Aarhus
Aarhus is one of the oldest towns in Denmark. Its name comes from the old words for river mouth, and a fortified Viking settlement stood on the north bank by the 900s; the town got its first bishop in 948, which is the earliest firm date anyone can put on it. The brick cathedral was begun around 1200, and for centuries after that Aarhus was a middling harbour town living off the sea and the farmland behind it.
The railway and a deep-water harbour made it Denmark's second city in the nineteenth century, and the university, founded in 1928, gave it the character it still trades on. The open-air town museum, begun in 1914, was the first anywhere to move whole urban buildings rather than farmhouses. In the occupation the German security police took over university buildings, which the Allies bombed in 1944. Since the 2000s the container port has been moving out and the city moving in behind it, with the library, the harbour quarter and the coloured glass on the art museum roof all belonging to that stretch.
A fortified Viking settlement stands at the river mouth
The town is given its first bishop, the earliest firm date in its history
The brick cathedral is begun, eventually the longest church in Denmark
The open-air town museum opens, the first to move whole urban streets
The university is founded and the yellow-brick campus rises in its park
Allied aircraft bomb the German security police headquarters in the university buildings
The circular coloured glass walkway is added to the art museum roof
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F / K
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+45
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Aarhus
▸ How many days do you need in Aarhus?
Two is right for the city: one for the art museum, the cathedral and the Latin Quarter, one for the open-air town and the prehistory museum. A third gets you the forest and the beaches, or a trip out into Jutland.
▸ Is Aarhus on the west coast?
No. It faces east, across a bay toward Zealand, which is why it has a big commercial harbour and calm bathing beaches. The North Sea, the dunes and the surf are about two hours away on the other side of the peninsula.
▸ Is Aarhus worth it if you have already seen Copenhagen?
Yes, and it is a different sort of trip: smaller, younger, easier to cover on foot and cheaper to eat in. Its three big museums have no equivalent in the capital, and the forest and beaches start at the edge of town.
▸ How do you get from Copenhagen to Aarhus?
The train is the default, about three hours across Funen and the Great Belt bridge, straight into the middle of both cities. With a car, the fast ferry from Odden cuts the crossing to a little over an hour. There are also short flights, which rarely save real time once you count the transfers.
▸ Can you swim in Aarhus?
Yes, in two ways: a harbour bath in the new quarter at the harbour mouth, right in the city, and proper sand beaches along the bay south of town where the forest meets the water.
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