Kronborg Castle
Renaissance fortress guarding the Sound at Elsinore, a World Heritage site and Hamlet's castle.
Kronborg stands on a spit of land at the narrowest point of the Øresund, where Danish kings levied the Sound Dues on ships passing between the Baltic and the North Sea. Between 1574 and 1585 Frederick II rebuilt the medieval stronghold of Krogen into a sandstone-faced Renaissance castle, working with the architects Hans van Paeschen and Antonis van Obbergen. Fire gutted much of the building in 1629, but the chapel survived and Christian IV had the rest restored by 1639.
From 1785 until 1923 the castle was used as army barracks; it was then restored and opened to visitors, and UNESCO placed it on the World Heritage List in 2000. The route leads through the royal apartments, the chapel and the ballroom, at 62 metres one of the longest halls in northern Europe, and down into the damp casemates where a stone figure of the legendary Holger Danske sits asleep. Shakespeare set Hamlet here, calling the place Elsinore.
Highlights
- Renaissance castle of 1574-1585, restored after the fire of 1629
- The 62-metre ballroom, among the longest halls in northern Europe
- Casemates with the sleeping stone figure of Holger Danske
- UNESCO World Heritage site and the Elsinore of Hamlet
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