Nyhavn

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Recently, while doing research for a number of posts on buildings around Råshuspladsen, I’ve been using the vast collection of historic photographs from the city archive that are now available on line and, although not actually looking for it, I came across this photograph of Nyhavn … a photograph of the view from the ‘new’ harbour looking towards the more open water of the main harbour.

It was taken sometime after 1900 and probably before 1910 and for me it sums up what is so fantastic about Nyhavn and about the survival of so many major historic buildings along the quays on either side.

For over 200 years, this part of the city was at the heart of commercial trade with merchants living here and with warehouses and workshops that continued to thrive even when, from the end of the 18th century and through the 19th century, they were superseded by the larger warehouses of Christianshavn and Larsens Plads and the line of large brick warehouses between Amalienborg and the harbour.

In the book Historiske Huse in det gamle København, published by the National Museum in 1972, forty four buildings in Nyhavn are included with short summaries of their date; their builder (if recorded) and with details about important later owners. Despite alterations, most of the buildings on the north side, date back, at least in part, to the construction of the harbour in the 1680s. On the south side was the palace of Charlottenborg, that survives, and then further down the harbour buildings from the naval dockyard and the first botanical gardens. It was only in the middle of 19th century that the larger apartment buildings along the quay below the bridge on the south side were constructed.

The photograph shows that the ships moored here - designed and constructed for specific cargoes or different trading routes - were as beautiful and as amazing as the buildings. And, of course, it was the ships that generated the income that provided the money to build and then later to improve the houses as the wealth of the city merchants increased and as tastes and styles and fashions changed.

Some will argue that the harbour has been swamped by it’s own success and has been or will be destroyed by the ever-larger numbers of tourists and the restaurants that are here to serve them but, of course, some will argue that it is only the income from tourism that now means the buildings can be maintained and that they now have a valid role.

The important thing is that they do survive and that they are well maintained not just as exteriors, so simply as a backdrop, but rather as incredibly important historic buildings and interiors that contain the physical and tangible evidence for how people in the city lived and worked and traded and the evidence to show how and why they were successful.