Kronborg completed

In 1585, Kronborg was completed as a well-proportioned four-wing building that was three storeys high and faced with greyish-yellow sandstone. With oriel towers on the outer corners, octagonal stair turrets facing the courtyard, columned portals, and copper roofs with attics and imaginative gables. In the middle of the courtyard there was a magnificent fountain with water-spouting bronze figures surrounding the sea god Neptune. Kronborg had become a mighty Renaissance castle unequalled in Northern Europe and a residence worthy of the King and Queen of Denmark.

The chapel in the south wing was converted into a castle chapel. Above the chapel on the third floor, a great hall extended throughout the length of the wing. This hall, called the Ballroom, was lavishly decorated with a series of 40 tapestries portraying the Danish kings.

The tapestries were finished in 1584, and the absolute culmination of the decorative scheme was produced from 1585 to 1586: the Royal Couple's table canopy with its backpiece of Flemish wool and purple gold and silver-wrought silk and with an allegoric decoration emphasising the status of the King of the Sound.

Fourteen of the 40 King's Tapestries have survived, seven of which are kept at Kronborg and seven at the National Museum in Copenhagen. The table canopy was removed by the Swedes as spoils of war in 1658 and is now exhibited at the National Museum in Stockholm. In 2012 the canopy will temporarily return to Kronborg as centrepiece in a new exhibition.