On Tuesday morning (April 16), a fire broke out at one of the most famous buildings in the Danish capital, the old Copenhagen Stock Exchange, with the tower of the exchange engulfed in flames and collapsing. The scene brought to mind the 2019 fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Since the 17th century, the stock exchange building has been at the heart of Danish commerce. Videos from the scene showed flames engulfing this historic building in the center of the capital. Emergency rescue personnel were operating beneath the billowing black smoke at the Copenhagen landmark.
According to CNN, stunned commuters and onlookers watched as the raging fire enveloped the unique 56-meter spire of the building, shaped like four intertwining dragon tails, before the building collapsed and fell onto the street below.
The Copenhagen police have urged people to stay away from the area, and there have been no reports of injuries so far.
According to reports by Agence France-Presse, the stock exchange building was undergoing renovation work when it suddenly caught fire in the morning, and the cause of the fire is still unknown. Built in the 1720s, the building was a commercial structure by King Christian IV, situated next to the Danish Parliament.
A police spokesperson stated that there were people inside the building when the fire broke out, and they have all been evacuated; military personnel are on-site supporting firefighting efforts.
Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt expressed sorrow over the destruction of this 400-year-old cultural heritage. In a post on social media, he added, “Seeing the employees of the stock exchange, the kind-hearted emergency service personnel, and passersby working together to save art treasures and iconic images from the burning building is truly touching.”
According to Reuters, emergency service personnel, Danish Chamber of Commerce employees, including their CEO Brian Mikkelsen, and even passersby were seen scrambling to remove large paintings from the building to save historical artifacts from the fire.
Copenhagen Fire Department Chief Jakob Vedsted Andersen told reporters, “We are making every effort to rescue everything.”
Emergency services are working hard to contain the fire, which has spread to all floors through the elevator shafts.
TV 2, a government-owned television channel, reported that Frank Trier Mikkelsen, the operational manager of the Greater Copenhagen Fire Department, described the fire inside the building as “intense.”
Mikkelsen told Danish Broadcasting Corporation that the fire is of a type that emergency management personnel fear, and explained that it would be necessary to dismantle parts of the building’s roof to extinguish the fire.
He added that part of the copper roof had already been dismantled using machinery.
The stock exchange building was originally built to house stalls for trading tea and spices. Prior to the fire, this Dutch Renaissance-style building was no longer the location of the Danish Stock Exchange but served as the headquarters of the Danish Chamber of Commerce.
As mentioned earlier, the spire of the stock exchange building is shaped like four intertwining dragon tails. Ulla Kjaer, a senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, told Reuters that the spire was designed in this way to “ward off disasters.”
“People believed Denmark would produce a lot of gold, which is why they placed dragons on top because dragons are known for guarding gold,” she added. The top of the spire also features three crowns symbolizing the three great kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
“This spire is truly iconic, there is no other spire like it in the world,” Kjaer said.
At the time of the fire, the scaffolding around the building made it more difficult for emergency services to approach the flames and fight the fire.
Authorities stated that personnel from the nearby Ministry of Finance were evacuated due to the fire.