Nytorv

Nytorv (English: New Square or New Market) 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.

Nytorv was created by Christian IV in 1610 when he cleared an area behind the City Hall in connection with his adaptation of the building in a Renaissance style. Nytorv thrived as a marketplace, as did Gammeltorv, which was located on the other side of the city hall. It was at Nytorv that the butchers carried out their work, while most of the sales took place at Gammeltorv.

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

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Wikipedia