Jarmers Square and Tower

Jarmers Square is located on the last piece of Copenhagen’s former rampart, where the ruins of Jarmers Tower from 1526-1529 can bee seen and visited. Jarmers Tower is 15 m in diameter and was built in two storeys with a 1.5 m thick red brick wall and a conical wooden roof. Jarmers Tower is the remains of 11 towers that were joined together as a part of the city’s middle age fortification.

Prince Jaromar
The Tower was placed on the city’s most westerly point, where an earlier little wooden tower was standing as a fortress to protect the citizens. Jarmers Tower was built around 1526-1529 as a part of the towns bastion and named after Prince Jaromar of Rügen, who at this very spot broke through the walls of the city rampart and attacked Copenhagen in 1259 together with his Wendian army. The tough Wends warriors destroyed the city by burning down most of the houses, after plundering them and ended up with demolishing Bishop Absalon's Castle at “Slotsholmen”.

Why the citizens ever named the tower after a commander of the enemy, who raze and destroyed their town is still a mystery.

Jarmers Tower on the former ramparts of the city being levelling out in 1880. The mill in the back is Lucie Mill at the old bastion, where the present Town Hall now is built.

The excavation of the tower and city walls in 1910 was thoroughly inspected and since restored and preserved as a historic ruin and a monument over the medieval period.

Preserved as a ruin
In 1880-1885 the rampart area around Jarmers Square was excavated and the moat levelled out in connection with the great exhibition in 1888, and then later when building the New Town Hall around 1900. Jarmers Tower was then restored and since preserved as a ruin.

Jarmers Tower has a circumference of 15 m. and built around 1529 in two storeys with a solid brick construction and walls as thick as 1.5 m. The Tower was a part of Copenhagen’s medieval bastion on the westerly side of the city.

A picturesque monument
The ruin of Jarmers Tower on Jarmers Square is the last evident relic of Copenhagen's medieval fortress and stands like a picturesque monument from the past on an island in the middle of the most high-traffic roads in the city.