Fortunstok

Fortunstok stands within Kastellet, Copenhagen’s star-shaped fortress beside the city’s historic harbour approach. Long embankments rise from moats around bastions, gateways, ravelins, and military buildings. The barracks forms part of this carefully arranged defensive landscape, where soldiers once lived close to the walls and pathways.

Built in the early eighteenth century under Dutch engineer Henrik Rüse, the long blocks housed garrison dormitories. Each room held triple bunks, a table, and benches, while nearby kitchens, bakehouses, brewhouses, and service rooms supported daily life. Kastellet also contains a church, prison, commander’s house, storehouses, granary, arsenal, and powder magazines. Restored embankments and moats still preserve the fortress’s military shape, while the barracks remain among its most direct reminders of ordinary soldiers’ lives. A windmill once stood on King’s Bastion, grinding grain stored inside the fortress.