The Kings Behind Kronborg and Frederiksborg, and How Hamlet Came to Elsinore

Two kings, father and son, made the castles of the castles day. Frederik II, king from 1559 to 1588, built Kronborg between 1574 and 1585 and the first Frederiksborg; Christian IV, king from 1588 to 1648, was born at Frederiksborg in 1577, rebuilt it as the palace you see, and rebuilt Kronborg after it burned in 1629. Both are buried in Roskilde Cathedral. That is why the day goes to those three places: it follows one family through two generations.

Frederik II and the castle on the Sound

Frederik II lived from 1534 to 1588 and was king of Denmark and Norway from 1559 until his death. The narrowest point of the Øresund at Helsingør already had a castle, Krogen, built by Eric of Pomerania in the early 1400s, because ships passing through the Sound paid the Sound Dues there. Frederik II replaced it with Kronborg, begun in 1574 and finished in 1585. The toll was collected at Kronborg until 1857.

In 1560, before Kronborg, he had acquired the manor of Hillerødsholm north of Copenhagen and built the first part of a castle there: the first Frederiksborg. The pleasure house in the park, the Bath House Castle, dates from his time too.

He is buried in Roskilde Cathedral, in the Chapel of the Magi. His tall monument stands beside his father Christian III’s, but it is empty: Frederik II and his queen Sofie lie in a crypt under the floor.

Christian IV and the palace on the lake

Christian IV was born at Frederiksborg in 1577 and became king as a boy, in 1588; he was crowned in 1596 and reigned until 1648. Between 1600 and 1620 he pulled down his father’s castle at Frederiksborg and built the Renaissance palace that stands today. In 1629 a fire gutted Kronborg, and he rebuilt his parents’ castle over the following ten years. In Copenhagen he built Rosenborg, completed in 1624, where the crown jewels are kept.

He began his burial chapel in Roskilde Cathedral after his queen, Anna Cathrine, died in 1612, and it was finished around 1640. He lies in a plain coffin in the middle of its end wall, Anna Cathrine on his left and their son Prince Christian on his right.

After them

In 1658, during the war with Sweden, Charles X Gustav’s army occupied Kronborg and plundered it; it came back to Denmark in 1660. That same year absolute monarchy began, and Frederiksborg’s chapel became the church where the kings were anointed, until the last anointing there in 1840. Since 1693 it has also been the chapel of the knights of the Orders of the Elephant and the Dannebrog. A fire in 1859 destroyed much of Frederiksborg, and since 1878 the rebuilt palace has housed the Museum of National History, founded by the Carlsberg brewer J. C. Jacobsen.

Hamlet, from Saxo to Shakespeare

The story is far older than the play. Around 1200, Saxo Grammaticus wrote the Gesta Danorum, the history of the Danes, at the order of Archbishop Absalon, and in it is the legend of Amled, a prince who avenges his father while pretending to be mad. It was first printed in Paris in 1514.

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around 1600 and set it at Elsinore, the castle Kronborg inspired. How he knew of it is not recorded. What is known is that a troupe of English players, several of whom later acted with Shakespeare, spent time at the Danish court while Kronborg was being built, and Kronborg itself says actors performed there for Frederik II and Queen Sofie. Britannica records the clown Will Kemp on a tour of Denmark in 1585-86. It is not inconceivable, as UNESCO’s evaluation of Kronborg put it, that the dramatist learned something of life at Elsinore from them.

Hamlet was first played at Kronborg in 1816. The castle’s own English-language guided tour, In Hamlet’s Footsteps, runs for 45 minutes from 30 April to 30 December 2026 (12:30 in November and December, 10:30 from 26 to 30 December), with tickets collected at the castle shop. In 2026 actors played short scenes in the great hall and courtyard daily from late June to the end of August and at weekends in September, included in the ticket.

Seeing all three

The two castles and the cathedral lie north and west of Copenhagen, each under an hour away by train. The three stops has what to see at each, including both kings’ chapels in Roskilde, and the castles day visits all of them with a guide, from hotel pickup to drop-off.

How these facts were checked

Written 30 October 2026. Frederik II’s and Christian IV’s dates are from kronborg.dk, frederiksborg.dk and the Danish royal house, kongehuset.dk; Kronborg’s history from kronborg.dk and UNESCO’s World Heritage listing and evaluation; Frederiksborg’s from frederiksborg.dk; the chapels and burials from roskildedomkirke.dk; Rosenborg’s completion date from the Royal Danish Collection; Saxo’s Gesta Danorum from the Royal Danish Library; Will Kemp’s Denmark tour from Britannica. All read in October 2026.