Culture Path

Start at the Melstedvej car park. Cross the road at the entrance to the car park.

The grounds on the opposite side are Gudhjem Museum’s Park, with mown paths and information about the natural landscape. At the far end of the field is Gudhjem Museum, housed partly in the former Gudhjem railway station and partly in a later exhibition hall.

The museum presents local-history exhibitions about the town and the railway, as well as changing art exhibitions.
When you leave the museum and cross Gudhjemvej, you can see an installation built on the foundations of the turntable where locomotives were turned around before returning from Gudhjem.

From the “turntable” you can see Gudhjem Mill above the rooftops. It is Denmark’s largest windmill, both in volume and wingspan. The mill is also known as Kullmanns Mølle, after Matts Kullmann, who built the Dutch-style windmill.

Follow Kastanievej down to Lillevang. You may now be able to see Christiansø on the horizon.

At Lillevang, turn left and you will come to one of Gudhjem’s old swing wells. A little further on, turn right into Kirkevej. At the end are the old cemetery and, on the left, Gudhjem Church, which is open to visitors during the daytime.

The Høst family has a burial plot in the cemetery, as do the artists Axel Munch and Aage Schad.

Inside the chapel ruin, high on the rear wall, is the gravestone of Xavier de Plane and ballet dancer Ellen Price de Plane, who was partly the model for The Little Mermaid.

Opposite the cemetery entrance is an exit onto the path leading down to Åbogade/Åsen and the harbour.

If you choose the route over Åsen, you get a fine view of the archipelago harbour. The harbour has been extended and dredged several times, but has also been damaged by two storm surges. In 1936, there were 49 commercial fishermen in Gudhjem. Today there are none.

If you take the path down to Åbogade, you follow the old, beautiful and steep church path. (Åbo is the Bornholm dialect word for eider duck.) At the bottom, turn right and you will reach the harbour.