Fort Royal and Fort Fredericksburg
Many lists name them separately. They are the same fort: Danish Frederiksborg, renamed Fort Royal by the English in 1699.
Header Photo - at Richter Fort Osu, Accra
Ghana-Net.com · Central Region · Cape Coast · Amanful
One fort, two names, and a hill above the most famous castle in Ghana. Denmark built it in 1661 to keep a foothold at Cape Coast. The English pawned it, bought it, rebuilt it as Fort Royal — and then lost interest. Most visitors to Cape Coast Castle never learn it existed.
Stand on the ramparts of Cape Coast Castle and look inland. The town climbs a set of low hills, and on several of them the Europeans put forts. Fort William and Fort Victoria are the ones people walk up to. The oldest of them is the one almost nobody mentions.
On the hill at Amanful — also written Amanfro — Denmark built Fort Frederiksborg in 1661. When the English took it over they called it Fort Royal. Two names, two flags, one building, and today very little to show for either.
Why two names matter. Lists of Ghana's forts often give "Fort Royal" and "Fort Fredericksburg" as two separate sites. They are the same fort. If you see both in one list, somebody copied without checking.
In the 1650s and 1660s Cape Coast changed hands so often that nobody could be sure who would hold it next year. Denmark was one of the players.
The castle at Cape Coast was begun by the Swedes, and for a few years in the late 1650s the Danes held it. When they lost it, they needed another foothold close by. With the approval of the King of Fetu, on whose land the whole Cape Coast area stood, they built a fort of their own on the hill at Amanful and named it after their king, Frederik III.
It was the same decade in which Denmark built Christiansborg at Osu, the castle that would later become the seat of Ghana's government. Frederiksborg was the smaller, shorter-lived sister on the central coast.
Built by permission, not conquest. As everywhere on this coast, the fort stood on land the Fetu ruler allowed the Danes to use. For how Denmark's Gold Coast story ended — two centuries later, at Keta and Teshie — see Fort Prinzenstein and Fort Augustaborg.
A foreign fort on a hill above your castle is a problem, and after 1664 Cape Coast Castle was English. The English solution was money. In 1679 Frederiksborg was pawned to the English, and in 1685 it was sold to them outright.
In 1699 the English rebuilt it and renamed it Fort Royal. Having gone to the trouble, they soon abandoned it. Cape Coast Castle was the centre of English power on the coast, the Danish threat was gone, and a second fort a few hundred metres away had little to do.
That is the pattern of Cape Coast's hills: forts built for one threat, left behind when the threat passed. The later British towers — Fort William and Fort Victoria — were built for a different enemy, the Asante, in a different century.
Many lists name them separately. They are the same fort: Danish Frederiksborg, renamed Fort Royal by the English in 1699.
The site appears as Amanful and Amanfro Hill. Both refer to the same rise inland of Cape Coast Castle.
Both dates are right. It was pawned to the English in 1679 and sold to them in 1685.
Amanful is part of Cape Coast town, a short taxi ride or a walk uphill from the castle. There are no signs. Ask for Amanful and then ask locally for the old fort.
Very little. What survives is fragmentary and built around. This is a place for people who want to understand Cape Coast, not for photographs of battlements.
Cape Coast Castle, Fort William, Fort Victoria and Fort McCarthy — all the forts of Cape Coast in one morning.
Cape Coast or Elmina. Options on ghanahotels.biz; flights on ghanaflights.info.
More on the town itself: Cape Coast. Ask before walking through compounds, and do not climb on what is left of the walls. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board: +233 302 221633 or +233 302 221635.
No tour goes to Amanful, but the Cape Coast tours below bring you to the castle below it. Walk up afterwards.
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Swedish, Danish, Dutch, then English — the seat of British administration and the largest slave-holding dungeons on the coast.
A lighthouse tower on an older battery, still operating. Walk up for the view over the castle and the town.
A small watchtower guarding the castle's landward approach. The quietest viewpoint over the town.
A British ruin on another of Cape Coast's hills — so poorly recorded that the official heritage body says no documentation exists.
All of them, in order: Forts and Castles of Ghana.
Fort Royal is not a sight; it is a correction. It shows that Cape Coast was once contested by Danes and English on the same hills, and that forts here were bought and sold like property — on land that belonged to Fetu all along.
Verified: 26 September 2026. Danish construction in 1661 with the approval of the King of Fetu, pawning to the English in 1679, sale in 1685, rebuilding and renaming as Fort Royal in 1699 and early abandonment follow standard reference accounts of Fort Frederiksborg. The state of the remains is described in general terms. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.