Skyspaces and snack bars: Aarhus as Denmark's main draw

It’s telling that one of the most modernly renowned installation artists chose to open his most significant work to date, As Seen Below The Dome, in ARoS, a modern art museum already home to Olafur Eliasson’s Your Rainbow Panorama. It’s a city that thrives off creativity and expression, and as the subterranean space heads into its final months of work, here are the haunts to mark on the map.

A trip to Aarhus should begin at a bake house. The smell of fresh bread, candied cinnamon, and golden maple spills from every street corner, as the inner city thrums with microbakeries and sourdough emporiums, the acclaimed “Danmarks Bedste” finalist, Berta, an honourable mention. Swirling the best snurrer (snails) in town is PANdito, a bakery just north of the city, butting the forest-covered coastline, in Trøjborg. It’s a new addition to the Aarhus baking scene as the owners, Mathias and Emma, have just returned from their Mallorcan baking stint which saw morning buns and cardamon-spiced rolls sell-out from the coffee hub, La Finca Corner.  And a gentle queue trickles from the dock-based Jumbo, as the soft, pillowy-doughed Berliner bursting with vanilla cream and trickles of raspberry jam are daily sell-outs.

It’s at the cultural centre, Institut for (X), a former Custom House that is now scattered with containers, wagons, and active work-sheds, where street-art colours the walls, potted plants scatter the gravel tracks, and where children whizz about on pedal tractors. First thing in the morning, a thrum of activity comes from a tiny hatch in one of the many wooden cabins. This is the self-taught baker, Rasmus Poulsgaard’s, gloriously delicious gluten snack shop, Blød & Sprød, and simultaneously the best stop in town for Denmark’s take on a cheese sandwich, coined a BMO (bolle med ost).

The food scene doesn’t halt after breakfast. The likes of Bar Piatto – sibling to the wine and snack haven, CAPO – is a restaurant and cocktail bar tucked within a yellow-licked, terracotta-roofed house which beckons the neighbourhood crew with a Dirty Highball garnished with three juicy nocellara olives and dishes of freshly rolled spaghetti. Come summer, the bar stools and mahogany tables are ditched in favour of the rattan, bistro chairs of the courtyard. The Italian restaurant reigns supreme, as the walk-in-only Osteria 98 predicts a weekend waitlist. A golden glimmer radiates from its glass front, as the green-tiled bar and kitchen becomes a stage of pans clashing, and chefs dancing; the vibe is immaculate.

Aesthetics, community, and homestyle cooking are the provenance of the new surge of Aarhus eateries. Take Manda, a supper club venue and café that serves toast on silver platters and granola bowls on transparent glass bowls, or CARTER, a fashion boutique that doubles up as a whipped butter emporium and coffee house. Both spaces thrive on the go-slow, small coastal feel of Aarhus. Revelling in this attitude is the jetty-based, summertime only, Kaj Kiosk, the go-to hangout after a dip by the Badeklubben Marseilisborg Havn – a more peaceful swimming spot than Aarhus’s raved, though undisputedly great Bassin 7, Havnebadet. Neon blue and stainless steel stools are shuffled this way and that on the deck in a game of musical chairs, as family and friends gather for a Haribo soft-ice or an aronia juice vodka punch.

Neighbourhood spaces are rife; the pockets of communities are clear. Wander down Ingerslev Boulevard on a Wednesday or Saturday for the bi-weekly farmer’s market, where cheesemongers holler to the next-door butcher vans, where wicker baskets spill over with Danish-grown flowers, and wooden crates are filled with seasonal produce. On flea market days (most Sundays throughout the summer months) , clothes and antiques are sold for charity, and a slow shuffle proceeds from the grilled toast sandwich shop, Nabo Kiosk, to the road-end hangout, Lije Om Hjørnet.

A multi-faceted ice cream parlour, coffee house, and natural wine bar, Lije Om Hjørnet gathers the folk from cycle and run clubs, friends over chess and card games, lone readers, to parents rocking a gabbling amount of prams. It’s a place where summer beckons live music nights on the corner-hugging, flower-edged terrace and where the golden hued lighting and steaming cups of hot chocolate, beckon during the winter. 

The opening of James Turrell’s Skyspace will deservedly pinpoint this irresistibly charming city on the art-world map. Paving the way for Denmark's cultural draw it proves that Aarhus, a city already awash with formative addresses and full of a lovable, easy going flair, is so much more than Copenhagen's mini counterpart.