Kronborg Castle

Kronborg sits on a spit of land at the very north-eastern tip of Zealand, where the Øresund narrows to about 4 km and Sweden is plainly visible across the water. Whoever held this point could watch every ship entering or leaving the Baltic, and for four centuries Danish kings did exactly that, charging the Sound Dues on each cargo. The first fortress here, Krogen, was built by Eric of Pomerania in the 1420s; between 1574 and 1585 Frederick II turned it into a Renaissance palace and gave it the name Kronborg, the Crown Castle. His Flemish architects Hans Hendrik van Paesschen and Anthonis van Obbergen clad it in sandstone from Scania and roofed it in copper.

The castle is a closed square of wings around a courtyard, ringed by bastions, with a series of moats and gates guarding the approach from the town. Inside, the ballroom of the south wing, 62 by 12 metres, was the largest hall in Northern Europe when it was finished in 1582; its walls now carry large paintings made for Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen. The chapel, inaugurated in the same year, is the one room to have come through the fire of 1629 intact, thanks to its vaults, and still has its original furnishings. In the Little Hall hang tapestries from Frederick II's series of Danish kings, and in the dark casemates beneath the ramparts sits the stone figure of Holger Danske, the sleeping hero who, local legend says, will wake when Denmark is in danger.

Kronborg's fame reaches far beyond Denmark because Shakespeare set Hamlet here, under the anglicised name of the town, Elsinore. The play was first staged at the castle in 1816, by soldiers of the garrison, and since then Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Christopher Plummer, Derek Jacobi, David Tennant and Jude Law have all played the prince on its ramparts or in its courtyard. The later history was less poetic — a Swedish siege in 1658, long service as barracks and a prison — before the army left in 1923 and the restored castle was opened to the public. It has been a World Heritage Site since 2000.

Getting there

The castle is at the edge of Helsingør, about 600 m from the town centre. Helsingør station, next to the ferry terminal for Helsingborg in Sweden, is the terminus of the Coast Line from Copenhagen. Copenhagen Airport (CPH) is about 47 km away; Ängelholm–Helsingborg Airport (AGH) across the Sound is about 32 km in a straight line.