3-034-737 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Koldinghus Castle, Denmark, 1871. Engraving of a sketch '...by a Danish correspondent, Mr. P. Toft...At Kolding, a town on the southern frontier of Jutland, which there borders on Schleswig, are the ruins of Koldinghus, a castle built, in the thirteenth century, by Duke Abel of Schleswig, the fratricide. This castle was, in the sixteenth century, the favourite residence of Christian III., of the house of Oldenburg, a lineal ancestor of the present King of Denmark and of our Princess of Wales. Here, too, in 1763, was the sister of our King George III., Princess Caroline Matilda, received with great honours on her way to Copenhagen as the bride of King Christian VII. The roof of the huge square tower, or keep, at the north-west angle, was formerly adorned with four colossal statues...one at each corner...The...statues were destroyed, with the greater part of the building, in a fire which took place in 1808, when it was occupied by a garrison of Spanish troops for the French General Bernadotte, afterwards King of Sweden'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.