Uraniborg: Tycho Brahe’s Cosmic Castle.

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In this series:

• Becoming Tycho Brahe.
• Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Tycho Brahe.
• How Tycho Brahe Got an Island.
• Uraniborg: Tycho Brahe’s Cosmic Castle.
• King James VI’s visit with Tycho Brahe at Hveen.
• Tycho Brahe’s Frenemy, Johannes Kepler. (Pending)

As we learned in the previous installment, Tycho Brahe made his first visit to the island of Hveen on February 22, 1576. That evening he made his first of many years of astronomical observations there. Frederick II of Denmark had offered the island and a generous annuity in respect of the astronomer’s famous observations of the supernova that thrilled all the world in 1572.

The island was inhabited by a parish church and 40 farms. It was approximately 8 miles in circumference.[1] All of the population lived in the tiny town of Tuna. Frederick’s grant specified that their rights under Danish law were to be respected.

Ruins of four ancient castles dotted the island and of another structure that might once have been a monastery. Brahe chose the site for the castle he would build near the middle of the island. He would design the castle together with a managing architect and buy the materials himself to build it and have them shipped in. The first stone was laid on August 8, 1576.

The French minister Dancey had asked to be allowed to perform this ceremony, and had provided a handsome stone of porphyry with a Latin inscription, stating that the house was to be devoted to philosophy, and especially to the contemplation of the stars. Some friends and other men of rank or learning assembled early in the morning, when the sun was rising together with Jupiter near Regulus, while the moon in Aquarius was setting; libations were solemnly made with various wines, success was wished to the undertaking, and the stone was put in its place at the south-east corner of the house at the level of the ground.[2]

Construction of the edifice, the outbuildings and water works would continue for all the time he lived on the island.

The grounds of Uraniborg [Sky Fortress, Cosmic Castle] were laid out such that four gates at the corners where the enclosure walls met corresponded to the four points of the compass. Those walls were 18’ high and made of piled earth overlain with stone. Inside the walls was an orchard of some 300 trees that went entirely around the circumference. Halfway along each wall was a semi-circular niche in which stood a gazebo. A path extended from each gate to a corresponding castle door. Each path made its way first through the orchards and then through large interior gardens. The gates on the north and south featured gate houses fitted up as workshops.

The castle proper was constructed of red brick with yellow limestone trim. At the north and south rose two towers 18’ high and 18’ in diameter. Smaller towers graced the east and west through which the body of the castle was entered. An octagonal pavilion rose from the center of the building, surmounted by a figure of Pegasus that reached 62feet at its height.

The north and south towers, and two platforms extending from them at the top floor, served as Brahe’s observatories. The rooves of each tower were pyramidal with removable sides in order to allow observation of all parts of the sky separately. Galleries wrapped round the towers to allow observations with hand-held instruments in the open air.

We are informed by Dreyer that “The south tower contained in the basement a chemical laboratory with furnaces, &c.” Brahe being also a chemist of wide reputation. The first of the constant influx of assistants that populated the castle may have been Peder Jakobsen Flemlose who sought to share in both the work of astronomy and medicine in which Brahe was involved. Another assistant was an apothecary referred to as Paulus Pharmacopola.

All of this required the daily needs of mind and body needed to  be provided for a large number of scholars.

above that on the ground floor was the library, and above that the larger southern observatory. In the north tower the centre of the basement was occupied by a deep well built round with masonry, which reached to the kitchen above. Over the kitchen was the larger northern observatory.[3]

The well served also to supply what was not yet a common convenience. Its water could be pumped throughout the castle via pipes.[4]

The observatories were filled with armillary spheres, giant sextants and quadrants and other smaller instruments, each for its specialized purpose. The biggest were too large to put in the towers.

As the two towers could not accommodate the instruments which Tycho required for his observations, he found it necessary to erect, on the hill about sixty paces to the south of Uraniburg, a subterranean observatory, in which he might place his larger instruments, which required to be firmly fixed, and to be protected from the wind and the weather. This observatory, which he called [Stjerneborg], or [the star fortress], consisted of several crypts, separated by solid walls, and to these there was a subterranean passage from the laboratory in Uraniburg.[5]

It was Brahe who designed and built the instruments. He was known well before Uraniborg for building large in order to get more precise measurements. He could measure angles to ten seconds where many astronomers struggled for a precision of half of a degree. Already, however, much smaller instruments could give the same or even better precision by the use of compound scales such as he hadn’t the skills to build.

 

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[1] Napier, Mark. Memoirs of John Napier of Merchiston (1834), 360.

[2] Dreyer, J. L. E. Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work, 93.

[3] Dreyer, 99.

[4] What powered the pump would not seem to be known.

[5] Brewster, David. The Martyrs of Science (1841). 140-1.

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Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Check out the Medieval and Tudor Holy Days Page for many other articles.