"To hold and protect Denmark!" a Kronborg Travel Page by Roeffie

The castle is situated on a landslide of the Sound. In 1425 they started to build ´Krogen`, which was used to protect the Sound and force ships to pay toll or taxes to pass the Sound.

In 1574 the actual building of Kronborg started and since King Frederik II was a big fan of Dutch renaissance, he built the castle in this style and asked the dutch architect Hans van Paeschen to design the castle and to supervise the building process.

The castle was finished by another dutch architect Anton van Opbergen in 1585.

Unfortunately a big fire in 1629 almost burned the castle down to the ground.

And again a dutch architect had to supervise the building of the castle we see today. His name was Hans van Steenwinckel.

But in the mean time the King lost a lot of it´s money, so he hadn´t enough money the built the castle as beautiful as it was.

You can clearly see that another tower was planned on the right side of the picture.

Kronborg became a army garnison and fortress. The castle is surrounded by walls and canals to protect it from the outside.

In the casemates, which can be visted by te way, 3,000 soldiers lived in rather bad conditions.

Other than that the castle is known through Shakespeare´s masterpiece Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. According to Shakespear Hamlet was living in this place.

Another story which comes to live in Kronborg is the story of Holger Danske. Holger Danske is a collosal man who sleeps in the casemates of Kronborg with it´s beard stuck on the table. The legend tells us that Holger is the protector of Denmark, sleeping all the time, but he sees everything what happens in Denmark. And if danger for Denmark occurs, he will protect his country.

Greetings Roeffie