Møvik Fortress, eight kilometres west of Kristiansand, houses the only remaining 380 mm Krupp gun in the world. The barrel alone is nearly 20 metres long and weighs 110 tonnes; the complete cannon tips the scales at 337 tonnes. Its range of 55 kilometres reached well across the Skagerrak strait. Together with a sister battery at Hanstholm in Denmark, the two installations were designed to seal off the strait and block Allied warships from reaching eastern Norway, the Kattegat and the Baltic.
The Germans named it Batterie Vara and built it between 1941 and 1944 using a workforce of about 1,400: 750 Norwegians, 350 Danes, and 300 Germans. After the war the Norwegian military used the fortress until it was decommissioned in 1958. Restoration work followed in the 1990s, and the site opened as the Kristiansand Cannon Museum in 1993. Beyond the main gun, the museum displays bunkers, crew quarters, a fire-control tower and other fortification remnants from the Atlantic Wall.
The Germans named it Batterie Vara and built it between 1941 and 1944 using a workforce of about 1,400: 750 Norwegians, 350 Danes, and 300 Germans. After the war the Norwegian military used the fortress until it was decommissioned in 1958. Restoration work followed in the 1990s, and the site opened as the Kristiansand Cannon Museum in 1993. Beyond the main gun, the museum displays bunkers, crew quarters, a fire-control tower and other fortification remnants from the Atlantic Wall.
