Thursday, March 28, 2013

Rosenborg Castle : Treasury and Crowned Jewels

Written on August 6th and 7th, 2011.  This is one of the many blog posts I have in the works for a long time and finally I have figured out the best way to post all these past adventures really easily. 
------------------

On August 6th I planned on going to Amelienborg Castle, where the royal family lives. But I have never been there and when I noticed on the train to Copenhagen that I forgot to pack my Copenhagen map, I needed to come up with a back up plan. I knew the general area as where Amalienborg Castle was and I knew which S-train and which metro train to take to get to this general area. But after I walked out of the metro station I will be on my own. So I deciede I would give myself an hour to walk around and try to find Amelienborg Castle. If I could not find it within that hour I would change plans and go to Rosenborg Castle instead because I knew where that castle was.

 Well after an hour of looking I saw some great canal scenary, (which I later found out is called Nyhavn) nice restuarants near the canal and a guy that looked a lot like 'Captain Jack Sparrow' but no castle. So I walked back to the metro station and made my way to Nørreport and Rosenberg Castle.  

When comparing the size of Rosenborg Castle to Christiansborg Castle, Christiansborg is much larger. But Rosenborg has much more history in it because the castle has not been damage by fire. I guess I went to the castle during a busy tourist time but that actually worked well for me. Since I was by myself, I would offer to take a couple's or family's picture in exchange of them taking mine. Every time I get a picture taken of me in front of the castle or statue I think how happy my Mom will be.

(Back story: When I was younger and I traveled some where I would bring back tons of pictures. My Mom always said 'You take lots of pictures but there are no pictures of YOU while you were there.' So now I make an effort to get pictures of me in front of a castle. Thanks Mom!)

You can enter the castle grounds for free but if you want to go inside the treasury or castle you much purchase a ticket (75kr = $13) also if you want to take any photos you have to pay an extra 20kr ($4). I wanted pictures so I went ahead paid 95kr. I must say when I went in the ticket office the man behind the counter was really busy and another guy was getting so frustrated by all the people not understanding that their bags must be put in the lockers. He kept saying 'No that bag must go in the locker'.



Once inside the castle grounds the first thing that caught my eye was the ARMED Danish soldiers guard the entrance to the treasury.

I decided to go to the castle basement first this is where the royal jewels are kept first. When I entered the area where the jewels are kept the first thing I thought was 'Crap it is really dark down here this lighting is going to make taking pictures difficult.' And I was right every time I took a picture with the flash the reflection of the flash would bounce off the glass and ruin the picture and when I tried to take pictures with no flash the picture did not turn out that well. So I pose a challenge to my photographer sister JA, when you come to visit I want to see if you can use your skills to take some great pictures of the royal jewels. Well noticing that taking photos was not working out I decided I was going to switch my camera settings to video recorder and take videos of the jewels instead. I think that idea worked out well since photo flash was giving me so many issues. The treasury is split into 9 sections, three of those sections are behind a five inch thick safe door.

Section A is the first section I walked into and it contains the ceremonial arms and large wooden barrels of the Rosenborg wine. Section B is where the objects made of ivory and amber were kept.


Section C is a small room behind a locked glass door and behind this door was hundreds of Rosenborg wine bottles on a wine rack. After a few failed attempts of taking photos I just moved on to Section D.

In Section D, the most notable item in this section was King Christian IV's riding trapping from his coronation in 1596.  Section E also had riding trappings but from the wedding of Prince Elect in 1634.





I have say the history behind all these jewelery peices is amazing. Some of these jewels date back to the 1600's and they look in decent shape.







After passing the safe door I reached Section F where many more jewels and King Christian III's Sword of State is stored.

Section G is where the royal batismal jewels are usually kept but the Crowned price and his wife had twin babies eariler this year and the jewels were used during the cemeromy and moved to another muesum for viewing. Also in this section was King Christian IV's crown used in 1596, this crown was used by King Christian IV and King Frederik III.

Section H had many interesting things in it. There was one cabinet full of rings and all these rings had large colored diamonds on them. Another cabinet stored these gorgeous elmerand earring and neaklace.
--------
I am working on my more blog posts. Thank you all your love and support.