The Copenhagen Fire of 1795

An afternoon

It started in daylight, at the Navy's old base, on 5 June 1795. By the time it stopped, 909 houses were gone and just over six thousand people were out of their homes in a city of roughly a hundred thousand. That is a smaller catastrophe than 1728 by every measure, and the second one inside living memory for the older half of the population.

Why Nytorv ended up with the town hall

Gammeltorv's town halls burned in 1728 and again in 1795. After the second fire the function crossed to Nytorv, and the Copenhagen Court House was built there between 1803 and 1815 to C.F. Hansen's design, serving as city hall and courthouse together. Its construction was delayed by material shortages and then by the British bombardment of 1807, which is how one square ended up carrying the scaffold, the town hall and the courthouse in succession. The scaffold history is on the Nytorv page.

What survived on Gammeltorv

The Caritas Well, erected by Christian IV in 1608, is still on Gammeltorv. It predates both fires and the scaffold on the square next door, and it is the oldest thing most visitors walk past without looking at. Both squares sit on Strøget, which runs straight through them.

Twelve years after this fire the city was shelled and the cathedral burned: the bombardment of 1807. For the walk that covers the sequence, see the guided ghost walk.

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