On the Town Hall Square, beside the Palace Hotel and the Lur Blowers statue, a single doorway leads down to one of Copenhagen's best-loved small cinemas. Gloria Biograf occupies what was Screen D of the old ABCinema complex, opened in the mid-1970s as the fourth screen of the Nordisk Film house; when ABCinema closed on 31 March 1989 the D-hall survived on special screenings under the name Biffen, before reopening on 3 March 1995 as the independent Gloria. The programme is hand-picked art cinema: quality films from around the world, retrospectives, opera and theatre on the big screen, Japanese animation, and a run of festivals through the year. Gloria has also pioneered direct-to-cinema distribution in Denmark, securing short runs - usually with English subtitles - for films that never found a Danish distributor. The single auditorium seats around 84 after its most recent refurbishment, and the cafe in the foyer serves coffee, tea, craft beer and snacks with a staff picked for film knowledge as much as service. Since 2024 the cinema has been run by the owners of the nearby Grand Teatret and the distributor Camera Film, a takeover that critics credited with making Gloria one of the country's most interesting screens again - the new era opened with a three-hour-plus Cannes winner that no other Copenhagen cinema had room for, followed by ambitious retrospective programming. It is an art cinema supported by the Danish Film Institute and a member of the Artcinema association. The auditorium was refurbished over a recent summer, trimming capacity from its original 120-odd seats to today's more comfortable house, and the underdog dynamic with the Grand Teatret - long the city's arthouse first stop, a stone's throw away - has flipped into partnership under the shared ownership. For visiting film lovers the practical draw is unusual for Copenhagen: a steady stream of English-subtitled runs of films that otherwise never reach Danish screens.

Type: Movie Theater

Address: Radhuspladsen 59, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1550

Website: https://gloria.dk

Capacity: 84

Opening Date: 03/03/1995

Serves Food