The Round Tower

Christian IV had a weakness for building, and this may be the strangest thing he put up. The tower was finished in 1642 as an observatory, and it is still the oldest working one in Europe. Go inside and you will see what makes it odd. There is no staircase. Instead a cobbled ramp winds in a spiral all the way to the top, a little over two hundred metres long and wide enough for a horse and cart. This was not royal whimsy. The astronomers needed heavy, fragile brass instruments at the top, and nobody wanted to carry them up stairs. Which led to the scene the tower is best known for. In October 1716 Tsar Peter the Great was visiting Copenhagen. He rode up the ramp on horseback, the whole way, inside the tower. Tsarina Catherine refused to ride, but would not walk either, so she was driven up behind him in a four-wheeled carriage pulled by six horses. The head of the observatory, an astronomer called Peder Horrebow, stood and watched the whole thing. He wrote it down, and the city paper printed it. That is how we know it actually happened and is not just a good story. If you make it to the top, you can see the whole old city at once.