Late in the afternoon on 16 December people started to gather at Ungdomshuset. The police were patrolling heavily in the area and vans of riot police had been spotted in the streets around Ungdomsuset. At about 5:00 pm, around 1,200 demonstrators had gathered at Ungdomshuset. The demonstrators were all wearing black clothes and most of them had masked their faces with balaclavas or bandannas and hoods. The front block of the demonstration were also wearing crash-helmets and were armed with clubs, iron bars and homemade shields.