The entrance to the roadway leading to Koneswaram is actually the entrance to what used to be Fort Fredrick. The fort was built in 1623 by the Portuguese and captured in 1639 by the Dutch. It then went through a phase of dismantling and reconstruction and was attacked and captured by the British in 1782, during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. The French then took it from the British, and handed it back to the Dutch for a large sum of money. In 1795, when the French had occupied the Dutch Republic during the War of the First Coalition, it was again taken over by the British, who named it Fort Frederick.