Aalborg has more to offer than its size suggests. The old town around Nytorv and Gravensgade contains a concentration of well-preserved 16th and 17th-century merchants' houses, of which Jens Bang's House (1624) is the most spectacular. The Budolfi Cathedral a few blocks away is the only stone medieval church in Jutland built in the round-arched Romanesque style that then spread north. The Aalborghus castle — a 16th-century royal residence now housing local government — overlooks the Limfjord from the waterfront.
The contemporary counterweight is strong. Kunsten, Aalborg's museum of modern art, is housed in a 1972 building by Alvar Aalto — one of his few buildings in Denmark — and holds a substantial collection of Danish and international art. The Utzon Centre on the waterfront was Jørn Utzon's final project before his death in 2008; it houses changing exhibitions on architecture and design. Nordkraft, a converted 1947 power station, is the city's cultural hub with theatres, cinemas, and food.
Lindholm Høje, across the Limfjord to the north, is one of the most atmospheric Viking and Iron Age burial sites in Scandinavia: 682 graves marked by stone settings in ship and oval shapes, on a ridge with views across the fjord. The site is never crowded and the landscape is unchanged.