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HISTORY OF ROSENBORG CASTLE
whole history is more dramatic than has been thought; to
this conclusion we are now able to come after a more pro
found study of the sources and after the investigations —
including excavations — that we have made.
II
Being alive to the possibilities of the future extension of
the city of Copenhagen, Christian the Fourth in the year
1606 purchased forty-one private gardens of various sizes
outside the city's northeast boundary; some of these gardens
he made into one large p le a s u re ga rden , where he at once
bu ilt himself a small castle or „summer house“ . In the accounts
of the paymasters this building is mostly called „the large new
house in His Royal Majesty's Pleasure-Garden outside the c ity “ .
I t was practically completed in 1607.
We see it as a fa irly high house, w ith an octagonal tower
w ith a winding staircase in the middle of the west front, drawn
in the distance on Johannes v. W ick's view of Copenhagen,
engraved by Jan Direchsen „1611“ (the National Museum's
Antiquarian-Topographical Archives), a part of which is re
produced on page 13. The drawing does not show the east
foursided projection.
From the paymasters's accounts, in which there are re
cords both of the contracts and of the payments to the
craftsmen, we learn to know this first „summer house“ . It
was brick bu ilt, and it had, as already said, both a stair
tower — for which four hundred square corner stones were