Absalon's Castle

According to the chronicler Saxo Grammaticus, the castle was founded by Bishop Absalon in 1167 to protect the emerging city of Copenhagen.

The castle survived for 200 years before it was destroyed in 1369 by the Hanseatic League, who first occupied and plundered it, and then demolished it completely.

A few decades later, however, a bitter feud erupted between crown and church, and for almost two centuries the right to possession of the castle and city was heavily contested.

From Absalon's Castle, the foundations of some houses, which lay within the curtain wall, and a well have also been preserved.

The well, a so-called hulk well made from hollowed out oak trunks, contained when it was excavated several building fragments of marble, believed to originate from a church which must have lain within the Bishop's castle.