Explore Bergen

KODE is Bergen's museum of art, design and music, formed in 2007 from the city's art museum, its decorative arts museum and the composer homes. Its four buildings line Lille Lungegårdsvann: Rasmus Meyer shows Norwegian painting from J.C. Dahl to the 1920s and a large Edvard Munch collection, while Permanenten, Lysverket and Stenersen hold changing exhibitions.

The Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene tells the story of the German merchants who ran the Hanseatic trading office at Bryggen for four centuries. The museum, founded in 1872, has its main building, Finnegården, under restoration, so it now shows the Schøtstuene, the assembly rooms where merchants cooked, ate and met in winter, with guided tours.

The University Museum of Bergen was founded in 1825 by Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie as Bergen Museum and later formed the basis of the University of Bergen. Its 19th-century natural history building on Muséplass shows a hall of whale skeletons and exhibitions on the deep sea and geology; the cultural history building nearby is being renovated.

Bryggens Museum stands at the north end of Bryggen and opened in 1976 to show the finds from the archaeological excavations that followed the Bryggen fire of 1955. Among the remains of medieval buildings it displays shoes, pottery, tools and a large collection of runic inscriptions from everyday life in medieval Bergen, alongside changing exhibitions.

Troldhaugen is the villa that composer Edvard Grieg and his wife Nina built in 1885 above Nordåsvannet, south of central Bergen, and where they spent their summers until his death in 1907. The grounds hold Grieg's composer's hut, the couple's tomb in the rock face, a museum building with a café and Troldsalen, a chamber concert hall for 200 listeners. The villa itself is closed for restoration until spring 2027.