Kastellet — star fort
CucombreLibre from New York, NY, USA · CC BY 2.0

Kastellet

  • 2 min read
  • 55.692° N 12.594° E

Interesting facts

  • The fortress was officially named Citadellet Frederikshavn, but almost everyone has always called it simply Kastellet, the Citadel.
  • The King's Gate carries a bust of Frederik III, and its clock and two bells were brought from the old guard house at Kongens Nytorv in 1874.
  • In front of the King's Gate stand two caponiers, small protected positions from which defenders could fire on troops attacking the entrance.
  • The surviving powder house of 1712 has massive walls and a gently vaulted roof designed to send the force of any explosion straight upward.
  • After a powder house on Copenhagen's East Rampart blew up in 1779, explosives were judged too dangerous here and the citadel's powder houses became jails.
  • Soldiers in the Rows slept in rooms about four metres square furnished with two triple bunks, a small table and two benches.
  • The barrack terraces acquired names over time, among them Elephant Row, Swan Row, Star Row and Fortuna Row.
  • The Golden Age painter Christen Købke grew up inside Kastellet and painted the citadel and its surroundings many times.
  • The Commander's House was the official residence of Denmark's Chief of Defence until 2008.
  • The present windmill replaced an older post mill of 1718 that was wrecked by a storm in 1846.

Why it is worth it

Kastellet is a seventeenth-century star fort that still works for the army and doubles as one of Copenhagen's favourite parks. Its origin was St Anne's Redoubt, an outpost that King Christian IV built in 1626 to guard the harbour entrance. After the Swedish siege of Copenhagen in 1658–1660 showed how vulnerable the city was, the Dutch engineer Henrik Rüse was called in to rebuild it as a full citadel. The result is a regular pentagon with five bastions at its corners, named for the King, the Queen, the Prince, the Princess and the Count, surrounded by moats and a line of outworks. It is one of the best-preserved fortresses of its kind in Northern Europe.

Kastellet was part of Copenhagen's defence against the British in 1807 and fell to German troops without resistance on 9 April 1940. Two Dutch baroque gates survive from Rüse's original work: the ornate King's Gate facing the city and the plainer Norway Gate to the north. Inside stand long two-storey terraces of soldiers' barracks called the Rows, two great storehouses meant to feed a garrison of 1,800 for four years, the baroque Commander's House of 1725, a powder house, and the Citadel Church of 1703–1704, with a prison behind it; holes in the wall let prisoners follow the services. Johann Friedrich Struensee awaited execution in this prison, and one inmate, John Norcross, spent 32 years here, half of them in a wooden cage.

On the King's Bastion stands a Dutch-type windmill of 1847, the last working one of the sixteen that once turned on Copenhagen's ramparts; Empress Maria Feodorovna, a Danish princess, had rye flour from it sent to her in Saint Petersburg. The citadel is still an active military site under the Ministry of Defence, yet its ramparts are open for walking and full of birds. The guard is changed at the Central Guard House daily at noon. The Little Mermaid, the Gefion Fountain and Langelinie are just outside.

Getting there

Kastellet is on the northern edge of central Copenhagen, about 2 km from the city centre. Østerport station, served by the metro, S-trains and regional trains, is about 400 metres away. Copenhagen Airport (CPH) at Kastrup is about 9 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Capital Region of Denmark 11The Most Beautiful Places in Denmark 18The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Denmark 5The Most Remarkable Star Forts 11The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302

From the encyclopaedia

Kastellet is a citadel located in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is one of the best preserved fortresses in Northern Europe. It is constructed in the form of a pentagon with bastions at its corners. Kastellet was continuous with the ring of bastioned ramparts which used to encircle Copenhagen but of which only the ramparts of Christianshavn remain today.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

55.69161, 12.59357per Wikidata