Den Gamble By

Den Gamble By is an outdoor museum located in the center of Aarhus. It was created in 1909, and recreates an old traditional city. Actually the place looks like a crossover between a museum and a kind of amusement park. Indeed, it is composed of about 75 houses and buildings from different periods, from almost all the different times of the 20th century.

It is a really attractive place because you can walk through the village, in the cobbled streets. If the weather is great it must be really nice to spend the day or the afternoon in that “out-of-the-time” place inside a city. Inside there is a restaurant, a bakery…. The prices are not so high and it was a good occasion to taste Danish traditional food! But actually it was pretty disappointing: the meal was a plate of open sandwiches with traditional bread, not so tasty…

Anyway, we were not there just to eat! So after the meal we started the visit walking in the streets. But visitors are not the only people walking in the streets!! There also are some actors, wearing old clothes… That is really awesome, people talk to you, explaining whom there are supposed to be. We met a guy, he was splitting wood pieces outside. He told us his wife was inside the house baking cookies. So we went into the house and we met his “wife” (an actress obviously), and she was really cooking. She offered us her cookies for free (amazing thing in Denmark!), and there were really good! That was really awesome.

Then we kept visiting the city. Each house was a museum. There was a building with an old hippie shared flat and a doctor’s house and consulting room from the 70’s, and the toy shop had been turned into an old toy collection. That was really great too. We also could visit the tobacco factory, the brewery, the mayor’s house, the school and so on...

Finally, we spent about 1 hour and a half there; because the city closed a 4 PM. Unfortunately it wasn't long enough, we could not see everything and we were quite disappointed about that. I think at least 3h hours were necessary to visit all the interesting things in the city… Anyway, it was really a good experience and Den Gamble By is one of the things you definitely must see if you go to Aarhus!!

I hope you enjoyed reading, see you soon!

A.

Crédit photo : Claire