Old Oslo was, however, much damaged by fire and wasted by war when about 1624 the illustrious Dane-Norway king, Christian IV., rebuilt the city on a slightly more western site and called it by his own name. In addition to his other accomplishments, which, as we shall see (p. 132) were very great, this Christian was a brave soldier, and the song of Ewald (d. 1781), "King Christian stood by the lofty mast" has become a National Anthem of the Danes. He fully realised the great advantage of having the Capital of Norway as near Copenhagen as he could. Christiania was but a few days' sail, Trondhjem was almost in another world. Of the new city's early days there still survive memorials in the present rather picturesque seventeenth century buildings of the peninsular castle of Akershus, in the old brick Raadhus with its archway and arcaded gables, and also in the Stor Torv, or great market-place, with its untented stalls round the statue of the Founder of the Town under the high spired clock tower of Vor Frelsers Kirke, which is dated 1696. The general character of present-day Christiania was, however, given to it during the early years of the nineteenth century when the city was largely extended toward the west. Happily the early Gothic revival had not reached Norway then, and the chief buildings are Classic, a style that is vastly to be preferred to any other for buildings that are not really among the best of their kind. A decent, rather uninspiring town. Broad streets with trolley-trams. Straight streets with shrubs and trees. Houses of brick or cement. Numerous little open spaces are, without much imagination, devoted to the cultivation of such vegetables as grass, elm, birch, willow, lilac and poplar. Like Capetown, which in position it somewhat resembles, Christiania depends for its beauty entirely on mountainous surroundings, for there is little that is striking in the streets. It is remarkable that in the capital of a country so extremely democratic, that has swept its nobility into the mass of the commons, by far the most conspicuous building should be the Palace of the King, and that in the chief town of a land of such strong national feeling, the main street should bear the name of one who gained the crown of Norway only at the point of the sword.