Akershus slott
Photo © 2005 by Tomasz Sienicki [user: tsca, mail: tomasz.sienicki at gmail.com], via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.5
Norway's largest medieval fortress began as a stone stronghold ordered by King Håkon V in the late 1290s, built to guard the approach to what was then a much smaller Oslo. Christian IV of Denmark-Norway later transformed its interior into a Renaissance palace between 1592 and 1648, adding banqueting halls, a chapel, and royal apartments inside the original defensive walls. During the Second World War, German occupying forces used the fortress as a prison and execution site for Norwegian resistance fighters — a history now documented in the Resistance Museum that shares the grounds with the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum.
