The more I visit Nørrebro, the more it grows on me – the part of Nørrebro close to town is, in my opinion, the busiest and most interesting part of Copenhagen (at least for a young person like me). It reminds me a lot of the neighbourhood I used to live in Bristol in the UK (Stokes Croft/Montpelier) which was an area with plenty of street art, skaters dragging their wheels on the roads, the coolest music venues, lots of vintage, charity, and independent shops, vegan cafes, alternative cinemas, and so on. Nørrebro is like a cleaner, even more “hip” version of Stokes Croft, and could probably be compared to many up and coming areas of London.
Compared to my beloved own neighbourhood – Vesterbro – Nørrebro feels more hectic, more diverse, more artsy. I say those things in a good way. In Copenhagen, Nørrebro unfortunately has the reputation of being a “dirty” area with “gang activity” “crime” and so on – I don’t know how true those claims are, but either way they are terms I tend not to attribute to city neighbourhoods because I think they are loaded terms, and well – let’s just say Danish standards for a rough neighbourhood are quite different to that of one in the UK. Of course, ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ areas come with a certain level of hype – but if I could pick a street in the neighbourhood that really captures and distils the unique vibe of Nørrebro it would be Blågårdsgade (try saying that twice as fast)!
Just take a look below for all the weird and wonderful sights you can take in the length of a single street.
Life in Copenhagen 