Creative Places in Copenhagen: A Local Artist's Guide
Updated: 4 days ago
Living in Copenhagen, I have a mixture of places I return to: galleries, art supply shops, gardens, museums, and cafés where I can sit with a notebook.
Some visits are deliberately about looking at art. Others are errands or walks that happen to provide something useful for a drawing—a color combination, an old shop sign, or a piece of furniture in a secondhand shop.
My illustrations often draw on older Danish interiors and everyday life, so I’m interested in places where traces of that history are still visible. These are a few of the places I enjoy visiting, along with some suggestions for exploring the city with a sketchbook.
1. Independent Art Galleries.
Vesterbro’s Meatpacking District is a useful starting point for visiting galleries, including Galleri Poulsen and V1 Gallery. Their changing exhibitions offer a chance to see contemporary work in relatively small spaces.
I also return to Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, which moved to Sankt Knuds Vej in Frederiksberg in 2025.
When I visit an exhibition, I might spend longer looking at one painting than at everything else combined. Sometimes it’s the subject that interests me; sometimes it’s a particular use of color or the way the artist has handled the materials.
Check the galleries’ current exhibition dates before visiting, since there can be gaps between shows.
2. Assistens Cemetery
Assistens Cemetery in Nørrebro is both a working cemetery and a place where people come to walk among the trees. Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard are among the people buried here.
I often bring a sketchbook. There is plenty to look at without having to cover much ground: the shapes of the trees, old lettering on gravestones, and the way the paths divide the space.
Assistens also has a personal connection for me: my relative, the pianist Johanne Stockmarr, is buried here.
It’s a place to take your time, while remembering that people also come here to visit graves and mourn.
3. Tutein & Koch
For artists in Copenhagen, Tutein & Koch is something of an institution.
Founded in 1906, the shop has supplied artists, architects, and designers for more than a century. Walking through the store feels like stepping into a small archive of creative tools — shelves filled with sketchbooks, brushes, pencils, and papers of every texture.
I often find that simply browsing materials can spark new ideas. Holding a new type of paper or discovering a different shade of colored pencil sometimes leads to experiments that shape the next drawing.
4. Cafés for a notebook break
A café can be a useful place to sit down after walking around the city, look through photographs, or write down an idea before forgetting it.
Paludan Bog & Café, with its bookshelves and busy tables, has a different atmosphere from Prolog Coffee Bar in the Meatpacking District. I enjoy both, depending on where I am and what I feel like doing.
I sometimes bring a notebook or sketchbook, but I don’t need every café visit to produce something. Coffee and a little time away from the desk can be enough.
If you’re planning a laptop session, check the café’s current policy. I’ve put together a separate guide to cafés to work from in Copenhagen, with more practical considerations.
5. Smaller art museums and exhibition spaces
Alongside SMK—the National Gallery of Denmark—and Louisiana in Humlebæk, there are smaller museums and exhibition spaces worth including in a Copenhagen visit.
Nikolaj Kunsthal occupies a former church. The building itself is part of the experience, and it offers a very different setting from a conventional gallery.
The Hirschsprung Collection is somewhere I particularly enjoy for its Danish paintings. It also connects more directly with my interest in older interiors, clothing, and scenes from everyday life.
I like having enough time to look closely. A museum visit might leave me thinking about how a room was furnished, how a figure sits in a chair, or how a painter has used light around a window.
6. Gardens and green spaces
Landbohøjskolens Have in Frederiksberg is another place I enjoy visiting with a sketchbook. Its planting provides plenty of material for small studies of leaves, branches, and flowers.
A garden visit doesn't have to result in a finished drawing. I might make a few notes about colors or take pæhotographs to look through later.
Returning at different times of year is useful, too. The same tree or stretch of planting can suggest something quite different as the season changes.
7. Flea Markets and secondhand finds
Flea markets and secondhand shops are especially relevant to the older Danish settings I like to draw.
I’m interested in ordinary things: cups, kitchen utensils, lamps, old books, postcards, and household packaging. They help me understand what people used and how a room might have looked.
An old photograph can be useful for the details around its main subject—the curtains, a coat hanging by a door, or the objects on a kitchen shelf. Those are often the things I want to look at more closely.
Copenhagen’s markets vary by season, so check the organizer’s current dates and location before making a special trip.
Back at the drawing table
I rarely reproduce these places exactly. More often, I combine something I’ve noticed on a walk with details from photographs, books, or objects I’ve seen.
By the time it becomes an illustration, the setting may be entirely imagined. The details gathered along the way help me decide what belongs in it.
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