Category: The World

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The World

29 Sep, 2016

The Tsar on Horseback

Horses and snails are not animals that interact much in nature. In the Round Tower, however, they have come across each other occasionally since the earliest days of the tower. The snail has famously lent its name to one of the most characteristic features of the Round Tower, the spiral ramp, which in Danish is called the snail staircase (“sneglegang”) since its winding interior resembles the shell of a snail. Spiral ramps also existed in a number of German Renaissance castles where they made it possible for the princes to be transported between different floors on horseback or by carriage....

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The World

22 Aug, 2016

Fell with a Screw

In the middle of the open sea, there is no fell. That was what two young Greenlanders came to realise when they set out on the long and highly unusual journey from their own shores to those of Denmark in 1724. If we are to believe the drum song that one of them later wrote about the trip, he even climbed up the ship’s mast to look for land and fells. But it made little difference. Surprisingly enough, he found exactly what he was looking for when he arrived in Copenhagen. For, here stood what he in the song refers...

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The World

23 May, 2016

The Leaning Tower

In 2009, it was possible to read in the free newspaper Urban that the Round Tower was beginning to lean as a result of the earthquake that had hit southern Scandinavia in the early morning of December 16th 2008. “After the large earthquake in Denmark recently”, a professor from the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen was thus quoted as saying, “we initiated an inquiry of especially the old buildings in Copenhagen, and the results of this show that the Round Tower is not standing in the same way as before the earthquake”. According to the...

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The World

5 Apr, 2016

Scratched in the Windowpane

Kilroy might not have been here, but in exchange Mia and Gustaf, Charles Rasmussen and “forester P. Petersen” have all visited the Round Tower and left a memory that can still be seen. For each of them have scratched their name on one of the small leaded windowpanes, which separate the tower’s spiral ramp from the rest of the world. And they are not the only ones. If one looks closely, it is possible to discover dozens of names and dates on the windowpanes. Especially if the sun is shining, for then they appear particularly beautiful. Some of the names are written rather ineptly, others...

An early depiction of the Round Tower from Holger Jacobæus' travel book

The Round Tower in the middle of Copenhagen, dating from 1642, is full of history. Read about it on this site, the historical annex of the Round Tower web page. New stories about the Round Tower are added once in a while. Enjoy!

History on Exhibit

Celestial globe from 1805 on exhibit in the Library Hall

The clouds perform a silent dance in the photographical works by HRH Prince Nikolaos, currently on exhibit in the Round Tower’s Library Hall. The title of the exhibition, “Celestial Coreography”, is inspired by the fact that the Round Tower was built as an observatory. The stars also dance on the celestial globe from 1805, which is also on exhibit in the Library Hall, connecting the exhibition to the Round Tower’s history.

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