Nytorv & Gammeltorv

You are standing between two squares that look like one, and that is not an accident. Gammeltorv has been the city's marketplace since the twelfth century. Nytorv was cleared around 1610. When the town hall between them burned in 1795, the whole area was rebuilt into the long room you see now. Look down. Somewhere under your feet the cobbles change colour in a rectangle of paler stone. That is the outline of the town hall that burned. The city chose to mark where it stood rather than forget it, which is fairly typical of Copenhagen. The fountain is the Caritas Well, put up by Christian IV in 1608. The figure is a pregnant woman with two children, and the water runs quite literally from her breasts. Caritas means charity. On the monarch's birthday, gilded copper balls are placed in the basin and dance on top of the water jets like golden apples. And then the thing that makes this square strange. Nytorv, the half either in front of you or behind you, was the city's place of execution. Sentences were read out here and carried out here, with a crowd around. So for centuries the city's image of charity and the place where people were put to death stood within sight of one another. Nobody saw a contradiction in it.