The bodega is Copenhagen's parole system: brown rooms, candle wax, bottles that open at noon, and everyone released on their own recognizance. Start at lunch, because the first room shuts at five, and finish underground with the jazz.
Two summer traps this year. Schønnemann, stop one, is shut from 10 to 17 August 2026, which is on its own site. And La Fontaine has no live music at all between mid June and 6 August: the bar is open, the stage is not, and the first gig back is Friday 7 August. Its own about page promises jazz all year round, which its own calendar contradicts. Take the calendar.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Restaurant Schønnemann
Marie Henriksen was selling packed lunches to farmers at the market in 1877 and then took a cellar off it. It stayed Cafe Hauser Plads until 1921, when her daughter married a cook called Petrus Schönnemann and the name changed with the marriage. The family held it for eighty nine years. This is a lunch house and it shuts at five, so it is where the day starts rather than ends. The drinking is snaps: smørrebrød and more than a hundred and forty of them, and the list is not published anywhere, it is handed to you at the table.
est. 1877, this name since 1921 · daily 11.30am till 5pm, shut 10 to 17 Aug 2026 · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Hviids Vinstue
Two Frenchmen were selling wine out of this cellar without a licence around 1704, and in 1723 the proprietor got himself admitted to the city's wine merchants' guild, which is the date on the sign. The jubilee book is candid about it: 1723 was fixed as the founding year afterwards rather than recorded at the time. The building is younger than the business, from 1767. Ernst Hviid put his name over the door in the 1880s. Twenty seven Danish beers, and from 11 November they pour about eight thousand litres of gløgg to a 1954 recipe.
a wine cellar since 1723, in a building of 1767 · from 10am, till 1am, 2am Fri and Sat · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Bo-bi Bar
A bell founder called Heinrich Tessin built this house between 1730 and 1733 and it is a listed building. In 1917 the ground floor was fitted with a long counter in the foreign style, which Denmark's own national reference work calls the city's perhaps first bar, brackets included. The sailor said to have opened it has no name in any telling of the story. Beer from the bottle, hard boiled eggs the only food, glasses washed by hand, red lamps and red paper. Nobody agrees what time it opens, so ring before you set out.
the house 1730, the bar 1917, and the perhaps is theirs · reported from midday till 2am, unconfirmed · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Palæ Bar
Not a whisky bar, whatever you have read, and we printed that too: their own menu carries no whisky list at all. What it has is jazz. This bar has given the Palæ Bar Jazz Prize every year since 1990, twenty five thousand kroner handed over during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and the roll runs from Bob Rockwell in 1990 to Yasmin Kierkegaard in July 2026. The room itself dates from 1984, in a building of the 1870s. The house drink is a Tanqueray and Schweppes. Come on a Sunday, which is jazz night.
the bar since 1984, the jazz prize since 1990 · from 11am daily, till 1am, 3am Fri and Sat · verified Aug 2026
jazz on Sunday
- 5 · The Last Call
La Fontaine
We had 1954 and it is 1959, and nothing anywhere supports the earlier date. The house is far older than the music: built in 1797 for a postman in the rebuilding after the great fire, and listed since 1945. Finn Ziegler had a share in it from the early seventies until 1986. Call it Copenhagen's oldest jazz club that never stopped, which is a narrower claim than the one on the wall and the true one. Take a drink at the bar and stay put. Wednesday concert a hundred kroner, Friday and Saturday a hundred and sixty, and the Sunday jam costs nothing at all.
jazz here since 1959, in a house of 1797 · bar nightly from 8pm till 3am, 5am Fri and Sat · verified Aug 2026
jazz Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; the Sunday jam costs nothing