Christiansfeld is a town that was planned on a drawing board by religious refugees, and it looks like it. In 1773 the Moravian Church, a Protestant brotherhood from Bohemia and Saxony, founded the settlement on land granted by the Danish king Christian VII, and laid it out with strict geometry: a central square, straight streets, identical yellow-brick houses with red-tile roofs, and a plain white church at the centre. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 2015, and the unity of the architecture is startling, a whole town that feels like a single idea.
The most moving part is the graveyard, which the Moravians call God's Acre. Its stones are all the same, small and flat, set in orderly rows, because in death everyone was equal. Men and women lay in separate halves, and the plain grass and the lines of white markers make a quiet, beautiful place. Another tradition is more cheerful: Christiansfeld is famous for its honey cakes, thin, spiced biscuits baked here since the eighteenth century, and you can buy them in the old bakery.
For riders, the Danish roads are a different proposition from the German ones. The speed limits are low, the enforcement is strict, and the penalties are heavy, so you need to pay attention to every sign. Dipped headlights are expected at all times, and Danes drive politely and without hurry. The landscape of eastern Jutland is gently rolling, with farms, woods and low hills and fjords cut into the coast, and the roads wind sweetly through it, with good surfaces and little traffic outside the towns.
With about twenty-seven hundred people, Christiansfeld is small, but should have a filling station and a few cafés, and the larger town of Haderslev, twelve kilometres away, has plenty of everything. Danish prices are higher than in Germany, so a coffee and a pastry may sting, but the pastry will be worth it. Park in the square and walk the streets slowly, looking at the yellow brick in the light.