The Old Stock Exchange

For almost four hundred years this house was the easiest way to draw Copenhagen. Christian IV had it built in the 1620s as a centre of trade, in red brick with Dutch gables, and on top he put a spire like nothing else: four dragon tails braided together and twisted up towards the sky. On the morning of the sixteenth of April 2024 the building caught fire. It was under restoration, and the flames took hold in the loft where the scaffolding and tarpaulins were. It spread faster than anyone could stop it. What happened in the hours that followed is why the date means something to Danes. While it burned, people ran into the building to save the art. Staff, firefighters, and passers-by who simply happened to be walking there. They carried out painting after painting. The largest was several metres across and came out of the smoke in the arms of people who had never met. The pictures from that morning went around the world. After a few hours the dragon spire buckled and fell. Around half the building was lost. What you are looking at is a house in the middle of being raised again. The rebuilding uses more than 800,000 handmade bricks, made by old methods, and is planned to be finished in 2029. The spire is coming back.