The half-timbered houses
Leaning painted frames that survived because the city was poor.
RhinoMind — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Villy Fink Isaksen — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Villy Fink Isaksen — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Alf van Beem — CC0
The oldest part of Aarhus, and too small to be called a quarter: a web of narrow cobbled lanes north of the cathedral, all of it walkable in twenty minutes. The name has nothing to do with Latin or Latin America — it was borrowed from the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1970s to market the area, and it stuck. The houses are eighteenth and nineteenth century, many of them slightly leaning **half-timbered** buildings painted yellow, red and blue. They were never demolished because Aarhus was poor in the twentieth century and had no money to modernise them — the reason many historic centres survive. The shops today are small and almost all independent: second-hand books, crafts, local clothing, a coffee roastery, and small cafés that put their chairs out on the pavement in summer. The best thing to do here is to have nothing to do: walk without a plan and turn into the side lanes. Note: **it is also residential** — evenings are quiet and the shops close early.
Leaning painted frames that survived because the city was poor.
Second-hand books, crafts and a coffee roastery, almost no chains.
The narrowest and most photographed passages, behind the main street.
Around Volden and Graven streets, Aarhus
**Two days** cover the city itself without rushing: the first for the centre — the Latin Quarter, the cathedral, Church of Our Lady and its crypt, the city hall, then **ARoS** and its coloured rooftop walkway. The second for **Den Gamle By** (the open-air old town) in the morning and **Moesgaard** in the afternoon. A **third day** opens the trips out: Jelling, Randers Regnskov or Mols Bjerge. Aarhus is a small city with a compact centre and most sites are within half an hour on foot, so you need no car inside it.
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