Kronborg Castle
— — the castle Shakespeare never saw.
Not only on a wall.
“A Renaissance fortress on a low spit of land at Helsingør, three kilometres of grey water from the Swedish coast. The Sound narrows here, and for four hundred years every ship sailing between the North Sea and the Baltic paid a toll under its guns. Shakespeare made it Hamlet's Elsinore without ever crossing the Channel, and the courtyard still hosts a Hamlet every summer. The copper roofs have turned the same green as the kelp at the seawall. Inside, the casemates run cold even in August, and a stone statue of Holger Danske sleeps in the dark, waiting for the day Denmark needs him. — from the studio
Kronborg Castle, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kronborg sits on a point of land at the narrowest stretch of the Øresund, the strait dividing Denmark from Sweden, about 45 kilometres north of Copenhagen. The current Renaissance castle was built between 1574 and 1585 under Frederik II, on the foundations of an earlier fortress called Krogen begun by Erik of Pomerania in the 1420s to enforce the Sound Dues. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2000, citing its role as a fortress, royal residence, and the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Sound here is about four kilometres wide, and Helsingborg in Sweden is plainly visible from the ramparts.
Frederik II's architects clad the older brick fortress in sandstone from Gotland and Scania, with copper sheathing the spires and roofs. A fire in 1629 gutted the interior; Christian IV rebuilt within four years, preserving the exterior silhouette and adding the long gallery that runs along the north wing. The casemates beneath the castle were carved into the bedrock as a soldiers' shelter and powder store, and the statue of Holger Danske — the sleeping knight of Danish legend — has rested in their darkness since 1907. The seawall is granite quarried at Bornholm.
Kronborg is open year-round, with longer hours in the high season from June through August and shorter weekends-only access in midwinter. Trains from Copenhagen reach Helsingør station in about 45 minutes; the castle is a ten-minute walk from the platform along the harbour. The annual HamletScenen festival stages Hamlet in the courtyard in early August, drawing companies that have included the Royal Shakespeare and the Old Vic since 1937. Modest layers help — the casemates and chapel hold the chill of the Baltic even on a warm afternoon.