COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Balancing on wooden boards, coppersmiths are hammering and fastening sheets of the reddish-brown metal onto the roof of Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange.
Fifteen months after a devastating fire destroyed more than half the building, a multistage effort to restore the 400-year-old landmark is beginning to take shape as workers lay a new copper roof on some of the less-damaged parts.
Back in February, workers began dismantling what remained of the old green copper roof, before carpenters could replace the wooden boards beneath. Now the coppersmiths are working through the summer to remain on schedule.
“The copper work, it’s not sophisticated, but the way it’s done is old school … we are doing it exactly as it was before,” said René Hansen of Danish coppersmith Toft Kobber. He said that only about 35 people have knowledge of such old techniques in Scandinavia.
Early in the morning of April