"Helsingør -- Hamlet's Home! " a Helsingør Travel Page by Ewingjr98

Helsingør (or Elsinore) was made famous throughout the world by Shakespeare and his story of Prince Hamlet, heir to the Danish throne. Hamlet lived in the magnificent Kronborg Castle along the water at Helsingør.

According to the story, after Hamlet's father dies, his ghost returns to tell Hamlet to avenge his death by killing Prince Hamlet's uncle Claudius -- who is now the King. In the meantime Hamlet's mother has remarried ... to whom but Claudius. Hamlet is not convinced Claudius killed his father, so he has a play performed that recreates the murder. Claudius abruptly leaves the play, convincing Hamlet of Claudius' guilt. When Hamlet finally attempts to kill Claudius, he mistakenly kills Polonius, the father of the woman he is secretly in love with. Hamlet is sent to England (apparently that was the worst punishment anyone could think of!) and his love, Ophelia, kills herself. At the end, Polonius' son, Hamlet, and King Claudius kill each other in a sword-fighting competition, and Hamlet's mother dies drinking poisoned wine. The kingdom is left in ruins as the leadership is decimated.

So the Shakespeare story is fiction... Helsingør's real history is kind of interesting, too!

Its history may date back as far as 70 BC, but modern records first record mention of the town in the 1200s when the first church was built. The town that we know today was established in the 1400s where ferries ran across the sound to Sweden. Parts of the castle Kronborg are also from the early 1400s, but the present form of the castle took shape in 1580.