It flanks the end of Frederiksborggade, where it turns into the Queen Louise Bridge, at the intersection with Øster and Nørre Søgade.

After the Northern City Gate was demolished in 1853 and a law definitively provided for the decommissioning of the fortifications in 1868, redevelopment of the land outside the gate began and the present day Nørrebro district emerged with Nørrebrogade, the continuation of Frederiksborggade on the other side of The Lakes, as its central artery.

The Søtorvet development was built from 1873 to 1875 by the Copenhagen Building Company, a real estate company founded the previous year by Carl Frederik Tietgen together with a circle of prominent citizens including Carlsberg-founder J. C. Jacobsen, manufacturer Lauritz Peter Holmblad, later Prime Minister Tage Reedtz-Thott, and later Speaker of the Danish Landsting Carl Christian Vilhelm Liebe.

In the 1930s, the café became a hangout for poets such as Sigfred Pedersen and Otto Gelsted who would often recite their poems standing on the tables.

The design of the buildings in the 19th-century Neo-Renaissance style was inspired by the architecture of French castles and Haussmann's developments in Paris.