The inhabitants of Copenhagen watched helplessly as the fire at the old Stock Exchange, dating from the 17th century, caused the spire of the building to fall.
Like a feeling of déjà vu. Five years after the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, the old Copenhagen Stock Exchange, an emblematic building of the Danish capital, went up in flames this Tuesday, April 16 early in the morning.
The famous spiral spire which overlooks the building built in the 17th century collapsed in the flames, images which recall the fall of the spire of Viollet-le-Duc on March 15, 2019.
“The facades are still standing, but they are starting to give way under the effect of the fire,” declared the director of the emergency services, Jakob Vedsted Andersen, at midday. “We are doing everything possible to protect the facades, but we cannot give any guarantees,” he added.
“A national treasure” gone up in smoke
The fire, the cause of which is not yet known, has shocked the inhabitants of Copenhagen, attached to this historic monument of the city which today houses the headquarters of the Danish Chamber of Commerce but also an important collection of art.
A local resident, Elisabeth Moltke, 45, came to witness the disaster: “It’s our Notre-Dame, it’s our national treasure,” she confided, moved, to AFP. “I have no words. It’s a 400-year-old building that survived all the other fires that ravaged Copenhagen, it’s a terrible loss,” lamented Carsten Rose Lundberg, another resident,
Elisabeth Handberg, a teacher, witnessed the drama from her classroom window with her students. “My students said: ‘It’s been there since the time of King Christian IV and now it’s burning’. They were also very touched by this history,” she told Reuters. According to her, the building and its spire will be “reconstructed”, “it cannot be otherwise”.
Another passerby, Thor Koustrup, a computer engineer, said he would be late for work because he had stopped to watch the fire. “It’s crazy, it hurts me inside,” he told the news agency.
The king deplores a “sad spectacle”
The fire caused the highest authorities in the country to react. “We woke up to a sad sight,” Danish King Frederik X said in a statement. “It hurts the soul of the Danes, years of history are consumed in the flames,” said Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Danish public television.
Copenhagen Mayor Sophie Haestorp Andersen has already announced that together with the Chamber of Commerce they will “try to rebuild the building.” The building is part of “the history of the construction of our city, a history that we cannot leave in a sea of flames, and that is why we will also do everything we can to rebuild it here,” she added.
The fire sparked an outpouring of generosity to save the works kept inside the building. Several people were filmed and photographed removing the paintings.
“How touching to see how Børsen employees, the good people of the emergency services and the residents of Copenhagen are working together to save the artistic treasures and iconic images from the burning building,” wrote the Minister of Culture Danish, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, on X.
Commissioned by King Christian IV, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange was built between 1619 and 1640, making it one of the oldest buildings in the city.
