Vallø Castle

Vallø Castle (Danish: Vallø Slot) is a manor house located 7 km south of Køge, in Stevns Municipality, on the island of Zealand in Denmark. It now serves as a residence for Vallø stift, a home for unmarried, widowed and divorced women of noble descent.

Vallø traces its history back to the 14th century. From 1554 to 1651 it was divided into two separate estates, West Vallø and East Vallø.

In 1708 Vallø was acquired by King Frederick IV who passed it on to Anne Sophie Reventlow. In 1731 King Christian VI passed the property on to Queen Sophia Magdalene who in 1737 founded the Noble Vallø Foundation for Unmarried Daughters (da. Det Adelige Stift Vallø for ugifte døtre).

Vallø consists of four wings with robust towers and is surrounded by a moat. The south wing, with its robust corner towers, and the south end of the west wing were built from 1580 to 1586 by Mette Rosenkrantz, one of the richest women in Denmark of her day. In Christen Skeel's time of ownership, from 1638 to 1659, the castle was expanded to three storeys and the west wing extended. The north wing was built by Johan Cornelius Krieger in 1721.

A three-winged building designed by Lauritz de Thurah was built in the courtyard from 1735 to 1738. The surviving central wing expanded with an extra storey by Georg David Anthon in 1765.

The castle was devastated by fire in 1893 but restored largely to its old design by Hans Jørgen Holm between 1893 and 1904.

The park was turned into a Romantic landscape garden in 1830 but retains elements from the former French gardens from the 1720s. I large flower park was founded in 1960 but it has later been disbanded.

Next to castle and its park there is a cluster of historic houses arranged around a street known as Vallø Castle Street (da. Vallø Slotsgade). Vallø Castle Inn received a royal privilege in 1784. The estate also owns a variety of other houses spread out across the surrounding countryside.

The estate is still owned by the Vallø Foundation (da. Vallø Stift) and covers 4,109 hectares of land of which 1,860 hectares are woodlands.

Text adapted from “Vallø Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Vallø Castle ranks #2,090 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #26 of the 49 mapped in Denmark. Founded 1586, it is older than 35% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 718 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,779 times in the last 60 days, more than 63% of the atlas. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Roskilde, 28 km away. See how Denmark compares in the castle statistics.

View on the interactive castle map →

Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗