Kongsten Festning Southern Norway

On what was once called 'Gallows Hill' stands the flower-festooned Kongsten Festning. Dating from 1685, it once served as a lookout and warning post for the troops at nearby Gamlebyen. Although it can get overrun on summer weekends, this otherwise lonely and appealingly intact is a fun place at which to scramble around the turrets, embankments, walls and stockade, or just sit in the sun and soak up the quiet.