Explore Oslo

Oslo Cathedral was built in 1694–1697 as Our Saviour's Church on Stortorvet and is the seat of the Bishop of Oslo and the church of the royal family and parliament. Inside are a Baroque altarpiece and pulpit from around 1700, stained-glass windows by Emanuel Vigeland and a ceiling painted by Hugo Lous Mohr between 1936 and 1950.

The Nobel Peace Center is the museum of the Nobel Peace Prize, opened in 2005 in the former Oslo West railway station on the City Hall Square. Its exhibitions present Alfred Nobel, the peace laureates since 1901 and themes of war, peace and dialogue, and each December a new exhibition about that year's laureate opens.

The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design holds the Norwegian state's collections of art and design, formed in 2003 from five museums including the National Gallery. Its building at Vestbanen by the harbour opened in 2022; the galleries run from older art and crafts to contemporary works and include Edvard Munch's 1893 painting The Scream.

Akershus Fortress is a medieval stronghold on a headland above the Oslofjord, begun at the end of the 13th century under King Haakon V and rebuilt as a Renaissance residence under Christian IV. Its ramparts and grounds are open to walk, and within the walls stand Akershus Castle, the Armed Forces Museum and Norway's Resistance Museum.

The Astrup Fearnley Museum is a private museum of contemporary art, founded in 1993 and housed since 2012 in two buildings by Renzo Piano on Tjuvholmen, set on either side of a canal under a curved glass roof. One building shows changing exhibitions, the other a rotating selection from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, with works by Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Damien Hirst.

MUNCH is the museum of the painter Edvard Munch, who left his works to the City of Oslo. It opened in 1963 at Tøyen and moved in 2021 to a 13-storey tower in Bjørvika designed by estudio Herreros. Its galleries show paintings, prints and drawings from the collection, including versions of The Scream, alongside temporary exhibitions.

The Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo stands at Tøyen inside the University Botanical Garden, which was founded in 1814. Its stone exhibition buildings from the early 20th century show Norwegian and foreign wildlife, minerals and fossils, including the 47-million-year-old primate fossil known as Ida, while the garden holds around 7,500 plant species.

The Fram Museum on the Bygdøy peninsula opened in 1936 around the polar ship Fram, built by Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen and later sailed by Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen. Visitors can go aboard and below deck; a second hall holds Gjøa, the first ship to sail through the Northwest Passage, with exhibitions on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

The Kon-Tiki Museum on Bygdøynes holds the vessels of Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions: the balsa raft Kon-Tiki, on which he sailed from Peru to Polynesia in 1947, and the reed boat Ra II, which crossed the Atlantic from Morocco in 1970. Opened in 1949, it also shows finds from Easter Island and a whale shark model beneath the raft.