Map - Hvidovre

Hvidovre is the main town in Hvidovre Municipality, Denmark. The town, a suburb of Copenhagen, is about 10 km southwest of the capital's center. It is the 2nd biggest suburb of Copenhagen, only beaten by Frederiksberg.

Hvidovre has been inhabited since prehistoric times. In 1929, a 3,500-year-old sword from the Bronze Age was excavated in Hvidovre.

A farm, Ovre (Aworthe), was located in the area in about 1170 when Esbern Snare gave it to Sorø Abbey that later passed it on to Bishop Absalon. A church was built during the Romanesque period. The name Hvidovre, meaning White Ovre, refers to the colour of the church, which was built in white chalk, as opposed to the one in Rødovre, Red Ovre, which was built in red brick.

Hvidovre did not become a real village until the mid 1600s. In 1682 Hvidovre consisted of 18 farms and 14 houses without any agricultural land. Back then only a few crops were grown in the area. In 1635 it consisted of the following: 12% rye, 58% barley and 30% oat.

Some of the land closest to the border with Copenhagen was converted into allotments in the 1920s. At the end of World War One, Copenhagen suffered from a severe housing shortage. Many of the farmers in Hvidovre saw it as an opportunity to make a substantial profit by selling their land off in small lots. 3,226 out of the 3,899 lots that existed in Hvidovre in 1924 had been sold off since 1918. The buyers were typically workers from Copenhagen and the houses often built out of Chevrolet or Ford boxes, which had been used in the shipping of car parts from America. The boxes were cheap and delivered on the site. Others lived in already existing summer houses. The settlement was not legal but by 1923 accounted for 34% of the population in the municipality.

In May 1945, a few days before the end of World War II, a gun fight took place on the street of Hvidovrevej between Resistance fighters and members of the HIPO Corps.