The Round Tower and Trinity Church

Facts

The Iron Age originated in the Round Tower

The Round Tower in the heart of Copenhagen is part of a building built to combine knowledge, astronomic insight and piety. Piety was found in the church, which was originally intended for students, whose church room at the adjacent halls of residence had become too crowded. Learning was found in the university library above the church. And astronomic insight was discovered in the 35-metre-tall observation tower with its platform and five houses for stargazing. The tower was inspired by Tycho Brahe's observatory, Stjerneborg, on the island of Hven. The foundation stone was laid by King Christian IV in 1637 and the complex was finished in 1656.

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Story written by Frederikke Heick

Time / Periode 1642

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" The Round Tower has always attracted a crowd. One of its visitors was Hans Christian Andersen. In 1857 he wrote about the library: "It is through the Round Tower that one comes to the university library, which, above the vaulted ceiling of the church, stretches like a large hall whose bookshelves form criss-cross streets. In the depths, at about the place where down in the church the altar stands, was the Old Norse Museum; here were hidden the millennium-old stone wedges, Ash urns and prehistoric swords". The Round Tower functioned as a predecessor for the National Museum of Denmark, and it was here that Christian Jürgensen Thomsen had the idea of dividing prehistory into three Ages: the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. These categories are still used worldwide today. "