Every design for Kalundborg

Kalundborg is known first for its church: Vor Frue Kirke, with its five spires, has risen above the town since the Middle Ages and is closely tied to King Valdemar I and Archbishop Absalon. The man behind the town itself was Absalon's brother, Esbern Snare, who raised the fortress of Vestborgen by a natural harbour in the twelfth century. Yet Kalundborg is just as well known for what came much later: a great broadcasting transmitter, the Asnæs Power Station and a web of factories sharing water, energy and by-products that became one of the best-known examples of industrial symbiosis anywhere.

Kalundborg lies at the head of Kalundborg Fjord on the north-west coast of Sjælland, where the peninsulas of Røsnæs and Asnæs meet, with Copenhagen on the far side of the island. Røsnæs runs out to the westernmost point of Sjælland, and from the harbour, close to the station, the ferry still leaves for Ballen on Samsø. On the edge of town stands Lerchenborg, the Lerche family's rococo home.

Up in Højbyen, the old quarter that once lay inside the town wall, the ruins of Vestborgen rest in a park just west of the church, and Kalundborg Museum keeps its many finds from the Viking Age. Stand there and the whole story is in one view: five spires above, a castle ruin below, and the fjord beyond.