It is a fire reminiscent of that of Notre-Dame de Paris. Two days after the impressive fire which ravaged the Old Stock Exchange in Copenhagen, the charred main facade collapsed on Thursday afternoon, Danish emergency services said. The building did not resist the flames, nor did its 54 meter high spire. The fire broke out for an unknown reason under the roof of the building on Tuesday morning.
“Unfortunately, the facade along Frederiksholms Kanal collapsed,” the services wrote on X, specifying that no injuries were reported and that the area had been evacuated.
On Tuesday, reactions to the fire multiplied on social networks. “We woke up to a sad sight,” wrote Danish King Frederik X in a statement, “an important part of our architectural heritage was and still is in flames.”
The Minister of Defense, Troels Lund Poulsen, also judged on X that the country was experiencing its “own Notre-Dame”. For her part, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declared to Danish public television: “It hurts the soul of the Danes, years of history are consumed in the flames.”
The building had already escaped several fires
A must-see building in Copenhagen, the Old Stock Exchange also houses a vast collection of works of art, several hundred of which have been secured. 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.
The stock exchange has repeatedly escaped fires that affected the surrounding area, notably in 1990. As the English television channel Skynews points out, the Borsen is not open to the public but often hosts gala dinners and various events. It has no longer hosted the capital's stock market activities since the 1970s.