Experience the best of Billund

Billund is a small town on the heathland of central Jutland, and the home of LEGO. A local carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, began making wooden toys here in 1932 and named the firm from the Danish words leg godt, meaning play well. Plastic bricks followed in the late 1940s, and the company still has its headquarters in the town.

The theme park, opened in 1968, was the first of its kind, and the Lego House, a building shaped like giant stacked bricks and designed by the architect Bjarke Ingels, followed in 2017. Givskud Zoo, with its lion safari, lies a short drive away, and at Jelling, a UNESCO site, two Viking burial mounds stand beside a church and a pair of carved runestones.

The food is Danish and plain: frikadeller, fried meatballs, roast pork with crackling, rye bread and pastries. The heath, pine plantations and lakes of the central Jutland countryside invite walking and cycling.