Aarhus, Denmark: Denmark's Second City and the Latin Quarter Below the Cathedral

Den Gamle By — The Old Town — is an open-air folk museum that has been adding transplanted historic buildings from across Denmark since 1914. It is among the best of its type in Europe because it operates as a living town rather than a collection of buildings: craftspeople work in the houses, a pharmacy compounds medicines in period style, a bakery sells period bread. The twentieth-century wing added in 2017 recreates Aarhus streets from the 1920s to the 1970s with an unusual level of commercial-archaeology detail. Allow two to three hours.

Aarhus Cathedral, Domkirke, is the longest church in Denmark — 93 meters from west front to east apse — and contains one of the finest collections of medieval frescoes in Scandinavia. The frescoes cover the nave vaults and date from the fifteenth century; they survived the Reformation because they were whitewashed over, and were uncovered again in the nineteenth century in good condition. Admission is free.

ARoS Aarhus Art Museum is one of the best contemporary art museums in northern Europe, housed in a 2004 building topped by Olafur Eliasson's circular sky-bridge Your Rainbow Panorama — a 360-degree walkway in colored glass, 52 meters in diameter, built 3 meters above the roofline. The view of Aarhus through the color filters is the kind of experience that doesn't need interpretation. The permanent collection includes strong Nordic and international work.

The Latin Quarter, just south of the cathedral, is the neighborhood of small streets, independent shops, and cafes that the center of every Danish city has in some form. Mejlgade and Grønnegade are the main streets. The Musikhuset — the concert hall — overlooks Bispetorv square and is worth entering even without a concert.

Moesgaard Museum, five kilometers south of the city center, holds one of the finest collections of prehistoric and Viking-era artifacts in Scandinavia, including the Grauballe Man, a peat-bog body from around 390 BCE, preserved in near-complete condition. The building itself, completed in 2014, is built into a hillside with a grass roof you can walk on.