the Dragon Fountain returns to Rådhuspladsen

/

This morning coffee and cakes were served to celebrate the return of the Dragon Fountain to Rådhuspladsen - the square in front of the city hall in Copenhagen.

The fountain, designed by PC Skovgaard and Thorvald Bindesbøll, was installed in the square in 1923, but it was then closer to the city hall and off to the west side. At the beginning of November in 2020, it was dismantled and taken to workshops to be restored.

It has now been returned to the square but to a new position, on the central axis of the city hall, and a large, granite basin - that had originally surrounded the fountain but had been removed 69 years ago - has been reinstated.

The bronze bull fighting with a dragon and the lower bronze basin with three dragons or mythical creatures are 6 metres high overall and together they weigh about 4.5 tons and the granite basin is 14 metres across so this is a substantial work.

Below the paving of the square, there is a large pump house where the water - approximately 42,000 litres for the 19 jets of the fountain - is filtered and treated to prevent the growth of algae.

the Dragon Fountain is on the move again

 

the Dragon Fountain is on the move again

/

The Dragon Fountain - the ornate bronze fountain on Rådhuspladsen - is on the move.

Today, work starts on dismantling the large sculpture of a bull fighting a dragon and it will be taken to the workshop of Skulptur Støberiet for restoration and repair. Then, on Friday, the bronze basin supporting the sculpture will be removed from the square and it too will be taken to the workshops.

The fountain has had a complicated history.

In 1889, there was a competition for a new fountain on Amagertorv - the public square about a kilometre to the east - and Joakim Skovgaard submitted a design. That design was then modified by Thorvald Bindesbøll but the competition was won by a design for a fountain by Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen.

Then, in 1901 as part of the Town Hall Exhibition of Danish Art, the Dragon Fountain design by Skovgaard was resurrected, cast in bronze in the foundry of Lauritz Rasmussen and installed in front of the city hall but with just a basin and the dragons around its rim.

A large outer basin was added in 1908 and then, in 1915, a central group for the top of the fountain with a bull and a dragon in combat was shown to the public as a plaster version but it was not until June 1923 that the bull and dragon were finally cast in bronze and installed.

In 1954, when H C Andersens Boulevard was widened, the fountain was moved further into the square by 25 metres and at that stage the outer basin was removed.

Once the bronze work of the fountain has been restored - with the work planned to take about two years - it will be reinstalled in a more central position in the square, on the axis of the main entrance into the city hall, and set further out from the city hall, on the cross axis of the Walking Street.

The outer basin will also be reinstated to make the fountain a much more prominent feature of the public space.

Skulptur Støberiet

the fountain with its outer basin in the earlier position, about 25 metres further west, before H C Andersens Boulevard, the main street running across the west side the city hall, was widened

the fountain earlier in the summer in its present location in front of the city hall
when restoration work has been completed the fountain will be returned to Rådhuspladsen but will be in a new position on the axis of the main entrance to city hall and with the outer basin reinstated

photographed yesterday, Sunday 1 November, with boarding in place ready for work to start today

Amagertorv with the Stork Fountain by Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen …. the Dragon Fountain was designed for this square but did not win that competition and was only installed 12 years later on Rådhuspladsen - the square in front of the city hall