Living in a Castle

One afternoon I took a city bus from the ranks in the plaza in front of city hall. It was a short ride – but too far for my weary feet – to the Medieval castle where Danish kings lived for many generations.

Castles were built for defense. Inside a brick tower I climbed the steep, stone stairs which coiled steeply to the living quarters. Old castles never had open stairways as pictured in movies, like the one where Erroll Flynn slashed swords up and down the steps against the villain in “Robin Hood”

At Rosenborg Castle I stepped into a big square room with plain plank floors, no furniture, and dark portraits of dead kings. Maybe it looked more like a royal court when decorated with colorful carpets and handsome furniture when King Christian IV sat on a throne to receive his subjects there.

I went inside King Christian’s private office, a little room, about the size of the small living room in my apartment in this retirement home in Garland, Texas. Maybe the king liked to get away from the crowd and hide in there. Or maybe he went there to keep warm. Denmark has bitter cold winters, and castles did not have central heating.

On the other side of great hall was the royal bedchamber, where kings and queens snuggled up in the same bed. No "king-size" bed would fit in that small room. During the reign of Christian IV’s great-grandson, Frederick V and his Queen Louise of England, had a corner of the royal bedchamber taken for installation of the first indoor bathroom and toilet in Denmark.

Castles were not great places to live. Little spaces hollowed of the thick walls had seats where a person could sit to defecate into a hole. The contents would drip down the outside wall into the moat. Ugh!

In “the old days” kings protected themselves from the public by living in castles protected by high walls and moats. When today’s royals leave their palaces, they are constantly hounded by photographers. But they can retreat into palaces with central heat and indoor toilets.