The Kastellet Citadel

The middle of the Kastellet is the Citadel.  This isn't open all the time and was used, until fairly recently, as an actual military post.  Dogs are allowed all over the place but they had to be on leashes inside the Citadel.  There were lots of dogs.  One that we saw was one of the largest Great Danes I have ever seen.  His head was pretty near shoulder height.  He was off-leash in the outside but he and his owner stopped on the bridge to get a leash on before they went in, which meant I walked right by them.  He was really, really pretty and that kind of mousey, browny-gray-ey color that reminds you of a Weimaraner.  I tried to take a really stealthy picture so they are kind of far away but they dog was really, really big.  (By the way, there really were a lot of Great Danes in Denmark.)



There was a long tunnel going into the citadel through the bottom of the embankments.

I could not talk Jael into standing inside the sentry tower for a
picture.  She was all "When the army puts up 'Do not enter' signs,
they probably mean it."   She was such a spoil-sport.
Look at the little peek-hole on the side, though--it is
a little heart!  That doesn't seem like the kind of scary army guys
that would be mad at you if you stood in their guard shack, does it?

The church in the Citadel.  When we were walking through, there were a fair number of people walking around who were dressed up and they may actually have been going to church here as this church still operates.  It is, as far as I can tell, part of the "Folkekirken" which is, literally, the "People's Church", called the "Church of Denmark", the "Danish National Church", or the "Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark".  According to Wikipedia, "the reigning monarch is the supreme authority, but not the head, of the Church" which seems like an awfully picky distinction.  If you click here, you can see a pretty interesting website which has a lot of good aerial photos of the Katellet.  It also has a lot of really interesting information about the history of the buildings.  For instance, the prison is built onto the back of the church and there was a hole in the wall between them so that the prisoners could hear the sermon every week.

The Commander's House.  A little fancier than the regular barracks.

The barracks in the Citadel, called "The Rows".  There are people that live here, it looks like.  I don't know if they are military folk or if they just rent out to anybody who wants to live here but there were curtains in the windows and little name tags on the doors.

The barracks had plaques commemorating General Olaf Rye and General Max Müller.  They were Danish war heroes from the First and Second Schleswig Wars, respectively.  They bravely (if not always successfully) defended the Kingdom of Denmark from the invading forces of the Germans (lots of Prussians) and the Austrians, who were trying to lay claim to Schleswig and Holstein (like the cows!).  Incidentally, Wikipedia also credits Olaf Rye with being the inventor of the sport of ski jumping.

Jael walking along the battlements, overlooking the Citadel.

These look kind of like they are fake cannons, as opposed to decommissioned authentic cannons.
There are cannons all around the battlements.

This is the sign that was on one of the exits.  We were there on April 1st, so we figured
that this was some kind of commissioning ceremony.  I looked this up on Google
Translate and it just says that, if you want to know what's going on, you can look
 it up on the Kastellet website.  

Looking out over Copenhagen and the moats from the top of the Kastellet battlements.