Qualla: Copenhagen Fire of 1728

Copenhagen Fire of 1728: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Around half past seven on the evening of 20 October 1728, on the second floor of a small house at the corner of Vester Kvarter, a candle fell over. The restaurant manager Peder Rasmussen and his wife Anne Iversdatter later told inquiries that their seven-year-old son had upset it — though the inquiry's officials, and most historians since, suspect the parents were casting candles themselves and blamed the boy to escape punishment. Whoever knocked the candle over, the flame caught quickly. The watchmen heard the alarm. The fire pumps would not fit down the narrow streets of Vester Kvarter. The wind was blowing southwest. By dawn the fire had crossed Vestergade and was spreading along five different streets. By the time it stopped four days later, almost half of medieval Copenhagen was gone.

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Image: Public domain

Copenhagen Fire of 1728: Wednesday Night, Thursday Morning

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The first night, the fire ran along Lille Sankt Clemens Stræde and Store Sankt Clemens Stræde and through Vombadstuestræde and Hellig-Kors Stræde. By 9 p.m. the main street of Vestergade was burning on both sides. The fire reached Sankt Peders Stræde, where it engulfed the Valken...

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Image: Public domain

Copenhagen Fire of 1728: What the Fire Took

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Helen Ilus, CC BY-SA 4.0. By Thursday afternoon the fire had reached Trinitatis Kirke, the church whose attic housed the University of Copenhagen library. When the ceiling collapsed around 10 p.m., the entire library went into the flames. Thirty-five thousand texts and a vast archive of historical documen...

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Image: Helen Ilus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Copenhagen Fire of 1728: The Wind Finally Turns

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On Friday morning the wind shifted again, this time to the north, and the firefighting briefly began to look organised — until the fire took the soap factory on Magstræde at noon, after which it spread west toward Nybrogade and Gammel Strand and east into Klareboderne and Mønterg...

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Image: Public domain

Copenhagen Fire of 1728: What Got Built Back

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Guillaume Baviere from Copenhagen, Denmark, CC BY-SA 2.0. Reconstruction took until 1737. A commission proposed wider streets, and at first half-timbered houses were banned to prevent another fire of this scale. By 1731 the ban had been lifted, because brick was too expensive. But the medieval city had been altered permanently. Streets ...

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Image: Guillaume Baviere from Copenhagen, Denmark | CC BY-SA 2.0