Pastel townhouses on a cobbled pedestrian street, and the real Christiansborg Palace that Borgen uses as itself.
What Indre By looks like
runs the full length of the district as one pedestrian spine, cobbled and closed to traffic, with cafe tables and shopfronts filling the ground floors under four and five storey townhouses. Narrow lanes such as and branch off it, cobbled and barely wide enough for a delivery van. Painted plaster and brick facades in yellow, grey and ochre stand shoulder to shoulder over bicycles chained to the railings. A block off Strøget, Jorcks Passage runs through under a glazed iron roof, its floor laid in black and white tile between shopfronts and statues set into the piers.
rises over Slotsholmen in grey granite, its tower topped with a copper roof and reaching 106 metres above the surrounding rooftops. Columned porticos and arched windows run the length of its facade. The building holds the parliament, the prime minister's office and the supreme court under one roof. , a round brick observatory tower built between 1637 and 1642, stands a few streets north on Købmagergade. Israels Plads nearby is a wide granite paved square with a single curved bench along one side.
The district ends at , where a cobbled quay runs alongside a canal lined with moored wooden boats. The northern row of townhouses is painted in reds, yellows and blues, the oldest of them dating from the 1680s. Grander stone fronts, including Charlottenborg Palace, line the water on the southern side.
Shot in Indre By
Christiansborg Palace stands in for itself on screen. The DR1 series Borgen and The Killing both use the real government complex on Slotsholmen as the seat of Danish political power, the building Borgen is informally named for in Danish.
Borgen, 2010 to 2022
Christiansborg Palace
The production could not get permission to film inside Christiansborg Palace, so it used the real building's own eastern entrance instead, the point where the character Birgitte parks her bike between episodes. The Killing's second season is also set at the palace, filmed on location as the real seat of Danish political power. Interior government scenes for both series were built as sets at DR Byen in Amager. Street View
Gamla Stan's narrow cobbled lanes and ochre and red rendered facades sit at the same scale as Klosterstræde and Badstuestræde, both medieval street plans later rebuilt in stone and plaster. Vasterlanggatan holds the same mix of shopfronts under four storey townhouses. Stockholm's buildings run taller and narrower than Copenhagen's, so keep more roofline out of a wide shot or the extra height will give the city away. Try searching ochre facades cobbled lanes now.
Raekoja plats in Tallinn, Estonia
Raekoja plats, the medieval town hall square, is ringed by tall narrow townhouses in the same pastel palette as Strøget's side streets. Stepped and scrolled gables add a period texture Indre By's own buildings mostly lack. The cobbled paving reads the same in both cities. Frame tightly at ground floor level, since Tallinn's gabled skylines are busier than Copenhagen's plainer roofline. Try searching cobbled square pastel townhouses now.
Nyhavn's painted canal front townhouses share the framing of a narrow street doubling as a working quay, boats moored against the kerb below the windows. Herengracht holds the same relationship between water, facade and moored craft. Amsterdam's gabled rooflines are taller and more pointed than Nyhavn's flatter parapets, so keep them out of a shot meant to double for Copenhagen. Try searching canal front townhouses moored boats now.
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