KRONBORG CASTLE (KRONBORG SLOT)

Listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2000, it's a beautiful seaside castle, proudly bristling with massive towers and copper spires facing Sweden.

There was probably already a fortress on this promontory when, in the early ^15th century, Erik of Pomerania decided to build his residence here, a fortress then called Krogen, in order to collect the toll on the Øresund. On the Swedish side of the river, 4 km away, another castle, Helsingborg, completed the system. Helsingør Castle was remodeled under Frederik II by Dutch architects Hans Van Paeschen and Antonius Van Opberger between 1574 and 1585, making it one of the finest Renaissance buildings in northern Europe. The building we see today is largely a later one, for two reasons: a fire in 1629... and the inevitable Christian IV, who took the opportunity to restore it and revise the interior decoration, which he is said to have personally supervised.

Three wooden bridges over the moat provide access to the main courtyard. First, we discover the chapel, which has preserved its superb pre-fire decoration and magnificent wood carvings. You then enter the royal apartments. The view from the windows is superb, reflecting the castle's strategic position. Although the overall impression is a little austere, the rooms are bright and elegantly decorated, without ever being overcrowded. Highlights include the king's and queen's chambers, with their painted ceilings, and the 62-metre-long ballroom, decorated with a series of large paintings created between 1618 and 1631 for Rosenborg in Copenhagen.

In the Royal Tapestries room, seven of the fourteen Flemish tapestries from Christianborg Castle in Copenhagen, saved from the flames in 1859, are on display... Woven in Helsingør by Antwerp masters at the end of the ^16th century, they numbered forty and represented the hundred (more or less mythical) kings of Denmark counted up to that time. Note in room 14 an astonishing trompe-l'oeil by Cornelius Giibrechts, dated 1672.

After the kitchens, you reach the casemates, preceded by the statue of Holger Danske (Ogier the Dane), deep in slumber, eyebrows furrowed and arms crossed.

Today, Kronborg is internationally renowned as the setting for William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Hamlet.