3259093995

4

read of in the works of Sir Walter Scott .—Originally the town of Copenhagen consisted only of small and rather low wooden houses, lying round the harbour on small islands or rather islets, of which still exist for example that of the Royal Castle. During the following 100 years the town still grew, and four churches were built, the earliest was that of St. Nicola, the patron of the sailors, then came Our Lady’s Church, St. Peter’s and St. Clemens Church. This church does not exist anymore, but we know, that it has lain somewhere between the “Raadhus Plads” and the “Gammel Torv”.—This place be­ came soon the proper centre of the town, where the selling of fish was going on from small wooden booths, like those we may still see on the market places of provincial towns; not till far later were shops in the dwelling houses known. In this market place, the first Town Hall stood, but what it looked like, we do not know exactly; likely it was built partly of stone, at any rate for the ground floor part, to which a high external staircase gave entrance; probably it had a square tower too. The place before the Townhall has surely been adorned with some nice torture instruments, which certainly have been in use very often, for in those early days, the Gouvernment used to handle without mittens. By the end of the 14th century, about the year 1368 this first Townhall was burnt, and the magistracy moved to the then episcopal palace, that stood on the site of our present university. But soon the clergymen and the magistrates came to loggerheads, and some few years later they built a new Townhall of their own, again in the “Gammel Torv”, this time on the spot where we now find the “Kiosk”, opposite the foun

Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker