St Nikolaj Kirke is the most distinctive piece of post-war religious architecture in Esbjerg — a 1969 building by Inger and Johannes Exner that uses raw white concrete and unrendered red brick in alternating bands. The Exners were among Denmark's most thoughtful church architects of the twentieth century, and St Nikolaj is one of their better-known commissions outside Copenhagen.
The interior is severe but warm: a high white nave with hidden roof lights, plain oak pews, and a single dark crucifix above the altar. The building shares a small square with the Danish National Academy of Music, and on weekday afternoons during term the open church doors often catch fragments of piano practice drifting across the gravel.