Vandkunsten Springvand

A modest fountain in a storied Old Town square

Vandkunsten Springvand sits at the heart of one of Copenhagen’s smaller historic squares, a short, cobbled pause in the dense fabric of the Old Town. The space takes its name from the Danish word for “water feature,” but the story reaches much further back than the fountain you see today. Around you, narrow lanes open onto a compact plaza framed by brick and plaster townhouses, some from the 18th century, that survived the great city fires of 1728 and 1795. The scale here is intimate: low eaves, gabled roofs and a human-sized square that feels almost like a shared courtyard in the middle of the city.

From medieval water mill to royal supply line

The name Vandkunsten goes back to a watermill established here in the late Middle Ages, when this area held a mill pond feeding Copenhagen Castle on nearby Slotsholmen. Water was pumped to the royal residence through hollowed wooden pipes, a sophisticated piece of urban infrastructure for its time. Over the centuries the mill and pond disappeared, leaving a patch of land that was later ordered paved and put into use as a market square. For years it served as a fish market, with stalls and barrels crowding the cobbles where you now stand. The current fountain draws directly on this watery, workaday past.

An early 20th‑century fountain with a quiet symbolism

The present Vandkunsten Springvand was commissioned in the early 1900s and inaugurated in 1910 as part of a broader effort to embellish Copenhagen with public art and civic monuments. Designed by architect Johannes Magdahl Nielsen, it is deliberately restrained in scale yet rich in detail. At its centre rises a granite stele, its lower cylindrical section clad in stylised fish-scale carving. From four bronze fish heads set into the stone, jets of water leap into the shallow basin, a playful nod to the square’s days as a fish market. Above, a polished red-granite hemisphere tops the column, catching shifts of light on bright days and reflecting the surrounding facades.

Architecture and details surrounding the basin

Look beyond the water to the buildings that enclose the square. Several are listed for preservation, including former breweries at numbers 8 and 10, later converted into residences. Their classical pilasters and period windows speak to the prosperity of 18th- and 19th-century Copenhagen. At one end of the square, a larger historicist building nicknamed “Kronborg” echoes the lines of the famous castle in Helsingør with stepped gables and ornamented brickwork. On the corner facing Frederiksholms Kanal, the red-brick building from 1910 carries one of the city’s oldest street-name signs, spelling the square’s name in an archaic form embedded directly into the facade.

Everyday rhythms in a small urban retreat

Despite its central location, Vandkunsten feels tucked away from the busiest streets. The fountain provides a soft soundtrack of splashing water that mingles with bicycle bells and snippets of conversation from nearby cafés and offices. Benches and low steps invite short pauses: a quick coffee, a quiet read, or a moment to study the sculpted fish and worn cobbles. The square’s modest size and layered history make it less about spectacle and more about atmosphere. It offers a glimpse of Copenhagen on a smaller scale, where infrastructure became market, and market became memory, distilled into a single compact fountain in the middle of the Old Town.