Frederiksborg Castle

These in turn lead to a wall along the lake with two round towers completed in 1562 bearing the arms of Frederick II and his motto Mein Hoffnung zu Gott allein (My hope to God alone).

Completed in 1581 in the Renaissance style with three protruding step-gabled wings, it served the king as a hunting lodge during the summer months.

He gave money to the poor, to the keeper of the park who lent the couple horses, to a woman who kept pheasants and "spruce fowls", and 100 Danish dalers to the Captain of Frederiksborg for his officers and servants.

Nevertheless, when reigning as Christian IV (1588–1648) he decided to have it completely rebuilt in the Flemish and Dutch Renaissance style (Northern Mannerism).

[9] The main Renaissance building built by Christian IV was thus completed in under ten years, an astonishing accomplishment at the time, although there were additions until the early 1620s.

[4] In July 1720, the Treaty of Frederiksborg was signed in the castle, ending the Great Northern War between Sweden and Denmark-Norway which had started in 1700.

Reconstruction was funded by public subscription, with substantial contributions from the king and state, as well as from the prominent philanthropist J. C. Jacobsen of the Carlsberg Brewery.

[14] The restoration and reconstruction work began in 1860 on the basis of old plans from the archives as well as detailed paintings and drawings by Heinrich Hansen.

[4][8] Jacobsen also donated a copy of the Neptune Fountain (the original by Adrian de Vries having been taken to Sweden) which was placed in the outer courtyard in 1888.

[15] In line with Flemish and Dutch Renaissance tradition, the quadrangular castle covering the entire area of the northern islet is built of red brick with stepped gables, towering spires and light sandstone decorations.

The usual concern with symmetry was overridden by the need to glorify Christian IV with sculptural decorations evoking astrology and mythology as can be seen in the gate house, the Terrace Wing and the Neptune Fountain.

Its south-facing portal, Møntporten, decorated with figures including Venus and Mars surrounded by musicians, is considered to be one of Denmark's finest.

The statues of the gods, decorating the two storeys, were crafted by Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger in Amsterdam and brought to Denmark by ship.

The Chancellery to the east was erected in 1615 as a true copy of Berritsgård on the island of Lolland, one of the finest Renaissance buildings in Denmark.

It was created from 1620 to 1622 to stand on the castle's forecourt symbolizing Denmark's position as a leading Nordic power in the early 17th century.

Symbolizing the Danish king, the sea god Neptune is the central figure, while tritons piping their seashells decorate the outer basin.

Over the next thirty years, the collection was considerably extended with paintings providing a national record of the most important figures in Danish history from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The Valdemar Room contains a number of history paintings which were specially commissioned for the museum, including Carl Bloch's Christian II's Imprisonment in Sønderborg (1871), Otto Bache's De sammensvorene rider fra Finderup (1882) showing the conspirators riding away from Finderup near Viborg after the murder of Erik Klipping, and Laurits Tuxens 1894 work depicting Valdemar the Great and Absalon destroying Svantevit's temple on the island of Rügen.

The works in the east wing are mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries and include Constantin Hansen's historic painting of the Fathers of the Danish Constitution.

In the king's prayer chamber adjoining the Chapel, there is a small silver altar crafted by the goldsmith Matthäus Wallbaum from Augsburg in 1600.

The restoration work, completed in 1880, was carried out by Ferdinand Meldahl who made use of preserved segments of the ornate gilded ceiling.

The original tapestries depicting important events in the life of Christian IV were woven in Karel van Mander's workshop in Delft.

It is thought Mehldahl managed to reuse parts of the window decorations including the monograms of Christian IV and Queen Catherine.

The sumptuous ceiling in the Privy Passage with flowering vines, creepers and rosettes is the work of the stucco artists Jan Wilckens van Verelt and Christian Nerger.

They are surmounted by scenes from the king's glorious Scanian War (1675–1697) painted by Claus Møinchen and Christian Morholt, despite the fact that in the end, Denmark was defeated.

[27] In 1850, Frederick VII had a landscaped garden laid out to the north-west of the castle with winding paths, canals and artificial lakes.

[28][29] To the east of the castle, the Baroque Park with its waterfalls was originally created by the court gardener Johan Cornelius Krieger for Frederick IV in the early 1720s.

Its carefully planned symmetrical features were designed to surround the park's centrepiece, a fountain from which water cascaded down the terraces to the lake below.

Frederiksborg castle is a principal setting in Rose Tremain's novel ‘’Music and Silence ’’(Vintage, 2000), winner of the 1999 Whitbread Novel Award.

There are a number of notable paintings of Frederiksborg, including: Court life at the castle and the 1859 fire are depicted in the 1892 novel Irretrievable[32] by German realist Theodor Fontane.