The Spiral Ramp in the Round Tower is winding towards the stars, while on old Danish land in the Swedish town of Varberg, a spiral ramp has been drilled into the soil. What is the connection between the two?

It is one of the best-known stories about the Round Tower: that the Russian Tsar rode up the Spiral Ramp, while his wife followed in a carriage. But it is not quite certain what happened on that October day in 1716. Was there, for example, six, four or just a single horse in front of the Tsarina’s carriage?

Nine loads of decomposed dung were removed, when a sealed holding tank under the Round Tower was emptied, containing the waste from the tower's two original privies. But also in the privies themselves, the stench was tangible. We have restored the one in the Spiral Ramp next to the Library Hall.

The 12-year-old choir boy August Nielsen fell down 25 metres when he was playing hide-and-seek one Sunday in 1880 and strayed into the hollow core in the middle of the tower. Today, one can safely step onto the glass floor in the open recess and look down into the depths that used to constitute Denmark's zero point.

Shattered limbs and wailing people filled up the Spiral Ramp during the British bombardment in 1807, and this is not the only time that Copenhageners have sought refuge behind the thick walls of Round Tower.

The niches of the Spiral Ramp in the Round Tower, now a popular hiding place for children, once contained rune stones from all over Denmark. Eventually there were so many that one could rightly ask whether it was a rune tower or a Round Tower?

Where do you go, when you want to show that your car is good at coping with steep climbs? In 1902, a German engineer chose the Round Tower to demonstrate the capability of his automobile, but he could only make it halfway up because the Spiral Ramp was divided not just one, but two and perhaps even three places.

If you wait long enough, vandalism becomes cultural heritage. What is, for instance, the story about Koja and Wibeke, who were so fond of each other that they placed a fine little heart between their names when in 1954, they scratched them into one of the 1674 small windowpanes in the Spiral Ramp?

“I walked up through it I walked higher and higher up through it/ This man-made fell’s inner screw walk”, a young Greenlander sang in 1724, returning from a journey to far-off Denmark. It was the Round Tower that he sang about.

Towards the top of the Spiral Ramp, two marble tablets tell about changing observatory buildings at the top of the Round Tower. One of the tablets also reveals the story about churches in Copenhagen once being poisoned by a harmful stench from the bodies buried under the church floors.