Børsen .... a dramatic fire is burning in the centre of Copenhagen
/I heard the sound from the sirens of fire engines as I was eating breakfast but my apartment looks away from the centre so it was only after looking at the rolling news service on the Politiken site that I realised where the fire was and went up onto the roof of my apartment building. From there the extent of the fire was obvious with dense black smoke billowing from the roof of Børsen.
The fire started around 7.30 and the iconic Dragon Spire, at the centre of the building, collapsed into the street about an hour later. Even at 10.00 the fire was said by emergency services to be still out of control.
Clearly, one significant problem was that the whole building has been enveloped in scaffolding. This had sturdy hoardings around the lower levels and heavy plastic sheeting above with a temporary roof over the whole building for a major programme of work that started in 2022 to restore the exterior brickwork and renew the copper roof.
It seems as if the fire services had restricted access where they would normally use hoses to douse the flames from above to control the spread of such a major fire.
Bricklayers and stone masons were working at roof level when the fire started. It is far too early to determine the cause of the fire. All the workers escaped as the fire took hold.
The most recent report at midday is that the fire is on all floors and that the most serious damage is in the half of the building between the spire and the great entrance that faces towards Christiansborg.
Much of the roof and presumably hefty timbers of the floor structures have gone. Now, the hope is that the external walls and the ornate brick and stone gables can be saved.
In the first stages of the fire it was possible to rescue some of the major works of art in the building including Fra Københavns Børs … a huge painting from the late 19th century of traders in the stock exchange by P S Kroyer.
Construction work started on Børsen in 1619 and this is one of the great buildings for Christian IV. It was built as an exchange or bourse and is not only one of the most important and most distinctive of the major historic buildings in Copenhagen but it is also the symbol of 400 years of trade and commerce in the city.
Børsen before scaffolding was erected for the current restoration work
the Dragon Spire collapsed into the street
about an hour after the fire started
Børsen - the borse or great exchange - built for Christian IV in the 1620s.
beyond is Christiansborg - the building of the Danish Parliament
update at 21.30 on 16 April
Although the fire is now under control, reports from the fire service earlier this evening suggest that parts of the building are still burning. Fire crews will be there through the night.
Half of Børsen is now a shell with no roof and, presumably, much of the structure of the floors below the roof - massive beams and joists - has gone. Those beams across the building for each floor and beams for the roof will have been built into the structure as the building went up so if they have collapsed that will have undermined the structural integrity of the building and removed what essentially stops the outer walls falling in or collapsing out.
Intense heat from the flames and then the vast amounts of water from hoses that drenched the walls will also have damaged the brickwork and the mortar so, again, collapse of what survives is still a very real problem.
Newspaper reports earlier in the day suggest that what have been described as up to 40 “large containers” will be brought to the site as soon as it is safe and these should provide temporary support.
Scaffolding across the entrance front, that was there for the restoration work, means that it is impossible to see what damage there is to the main end gable with it’s ornate and sophisticated design of stone columns and caryatids. It is one of the finest pieces of architectural design and craftsmanship from the early 17th-century in Denmark and it has to be hoped that it can be saved.
Such catastrophic damage from the fire will hit the people of the city hard …. there was film on the TV news of people in tears as they stood and watched this much-loved and much admired building burn. Even if is at an almost subliminal level, the building is very much at the heart of the city. Many of us walk or drive past every day and when the building has been open for Kultur Natten - the Night of Culture - in October, some of the longest queues are here with people waiting to see around the interior.
I was there yesterday. I got off the bus at the Børsen stop and then spent the afternoon walking around Christiansborg to look at and photograph the work that has just started in the courtyard in front of the main entrance into parliament. I checked quickly to see if any of the scaffolding around the exchange had been removed because I wanted photographs of the new brickwork. Now, who knows what will be seen as debris is removed and new scaffolding is built to support what has survived.
