Kronborg Castle
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How it came to be
In the 1420s King Eric of Pomerania built the fortress of Krogen on the northeastern tip of Zealand, where the Øresund narrows to 4 km. In 1429 he introduced the Sound Dues, and every ship entering or leaving the Baltic had to stop at Helsingør and pay. With Helsingborg Castle on the opposite shore, Denmark controlled all shipping through the Sound.
From 1574 to 1585 Frederick II turned the medieval fortress into a Renaissance castle, which took the name Kronborg. The Flemish architects Hans Hendrik van Paesschen and Anthonis van Obbergen led the work, and the 62 m ballroom, completed in 1582, was the largest hall in Northern Europe. A fire in 1629 destroyed much of the castle, and Christian IV rebuilt the exterior almost exactly as before; in 1658 a Swedish army captured Kronborg and carried off many of its art treasures.
From 1739 the castle also served as a prison, and in 1772 Queen Caroline Matilda, sister of George III of Britain, was held here after the scandal of her affair with Johann Friedrich Struensee. The Sound Dues ended with the Copenhagen Convention, which came into force on 14 March 1857. The army, in charge of the castle from 1785, left in 1923, and the restored castle was opened to the public and inscribed in 2000.
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