page_title: Nytorv
section_title: The city's scaffold
hierarchical_section_title: Nytorv / History / The city's scaffold
caption_attribution_description: Woman in iron at the "Kag" on Nytorv in Copenhagen, Denmark.
context_page_description: Nytorv is a public square in the centre of Copenhagen, Denmark. Together with the adjoining Gammeltorv it forms a common space, today part of the Strøget pedestrian zone. The square is dominated by the imposing Neoclassical façade of the Copenhagen Court House, which from 1815-1905 also served as the City Hall.
context_section_description: Nytorv also became the location of the city's scaffold and a pillory. Pillories were also found at a number of other sites around the city. A permanent scaffold was not constructed until 1627, and in 1728, when the City Hall was rebuilt after the Copenhagen Fire of 1728, an octagonal masonry podium was built.
  Between 1728 and 1740, Ludvig Holberg lived in a house on the corner of Gammeltorv and Nygade, on the border between the two squares. In an epigram, originally in Latin, he commented on the dual nature of the site, between posh Gammeltorv, with the Caritas Well (the 'ancient arts'), and Nytorv with its sinister execution facilities:
  You ask, in what part of town, I now abide
  Two squares quite near, papillae, on the way.
  The one Gammel Torv, where ancient arts confide
  Fights and theft and fraud and drink and play.
  The other Nytorv where a scaffold has been set,
  Midway between the two doth Justitia now reign,
  So between the doomed and the gallows in duet
  I live; my one God, help me 'gainst the twain.
  — Ludvig Holberg
  The last executions to be carried out at the scaffold behind the City Hall took place in 1758 when Frederik Hammond, the owner of an iron works in Norway, and his assistant, a Swede named Anders Sundblad, were convicted of producing counterfeit securities for an amount of 35,000 rigsdaler and beheaded. Three years later the scaffold was removed and from then executions only took place at Østerfælled, Vesterfælled and Amagerfælled, though branding and whipping continued at the Nytorv pillory until 1780.
caption: Woman in neck iron at the pillory on Nytorv, c. 1780
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