Insight Guides Pocket Oslo

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight Guides
• ISBN:
  9781786717405
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Nestled amongst forest and fjords, Oslo is the perfect combination of nature experiences and city life. Norway's capital is a vibrant cosmopolitan city with world-class museums such as the Munch Museum and a state-of-art opera house, as well as its very own ski ramp. Insight Pocket Guide Oslo is a thoroughly updated, full-colour travel guide that combines lively text with vivid photography to highlight the best that the city has to offer.

Inside Pocket Guide Oslo:
Where To Go details all the key sights in the city, while handy maps on the cover flaps help you find your way around, and are cross-referenced to the text.

Top 10 Attractions gives a run-down of the best sights to take in on your trip.

Perfect Day provides an itinerary of the city.

What To Do is a snapshot of ways to spend your spare time, from admiring outdoor art at the Vigeland Sculpture Park to skiing in the hills.

Essential information on Oslo's culture, including a brief history of the city.

Eating Out covers the city's best cuisine.

Curated listings of the best hotels and restaurants.

A-Z of all the practical information you'll need.

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure. 'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine

Where To Go

Oslo is easy to get your arms around. Its city centre (sentrum) is compact, with most top attractions within walking distance. There is also a far-reaching and efficient public transport system featuring trams, trains, buses and ferries.

Enjoying the sun, Karl Johans Gate

AWL Images

Most visitors stay in the centre, which is home to the majority of hotels. Oslo is a low-rise capital that sprawls over a large area, but its centre is firmly anchored by the main boulevard, Karl Johans Gate. This boulevard runs east from the central railway station (called ‘Oslo S’, for Sentralstasjon) up to the Parliament, the National Theatre and the Royal Palace. ‘Oslo S’ and the station under the National Theatre are key stops on the express train line that runs from Gardermoen airport north of the city. The stations are also starting points for excursions outside Oslo, although most suggested in this chapter (to the countryside of Hadeland, the mountains of Telemark, or south along the fjord, for example) are best taken by car or ferry. Next to Oslo S, in Østbanehallen, Jernbanetorget 1, is the gleaming new Oslo Visitor Centre.

The Centre

A good starting point for exploring Oslo is the large open plaza called Rådhusplassen on the harbour side of the City Hall. The main E18 highway ran straight across it until the late 1980s, when traffic through the city was sunk into a multi-lane tunnel. Today the plaza is free of cars and open to the inner harbour, with its fishing boats, ferries and veteran ships.

City Hall

Oslo’s majestic Akershus Fortress and Castle (for more information, click here) sit grandly above the inner harbour and arguably form the capital’s most important landmark. The City Hall 1 [map] is Oslo’s architectural heart and soul (Rådhuset; www.rft.oslo.kommune.no; daily 9am–4pm, July–Aug until 6pm; free; free guided tours June–Aug at 10am, noon and 2pm). The people working inside shape the city’s landscape and guide its operations, and its soaring, mural-covered lobby is the city’s premier venue for special events. This is where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded (for more information, click here).

The City Hall dominates Oslo’s inner-city skyline, its austere style attracting both praise and criticism. Detractors joke that it resembles two large blocks of brown Norwegian goat’s cheese (geitost), but leading Norwegian artists of their time decorated the large complex inside and out. Artworks depict the country’s history (statues of the Viking king Harald Hardråde on the western wall and St Hallvard, the city’s patron saint, on the southern wall) and its cultural heritage (outdoor wood carvings adorning the walls around its main entry area). Much of the complex was built in the 1930s, and the labour movement is also glorified in the statues along its harbour side. The carillon in the eastern tower rings every 15 minutes, and on the hour plays a tune, often seasonally inspired music by Norwegian composers like Edvard Grieg.

The highlight of the City Hall, though, is seen immediately upon entering from its city side. The lobby is awash with light and colour, its ceilings and walls decorated by a long list of Norwegian artists. Much of their art depicts how Oslo moved from an era of class struggles and foreign occupation to post-war optimism and fellowship in building one of Scandinavia’s leading social welfare states. Work began on the City Hall in 1931, but the building officially opened only in 1950, after delays caused by the Depression and war.

City Hall mural

VISITOSLO/Tord Baklund

The circular street around the City Hall’s main entrance on the city side is named Fridtjof Nansens Plass, after the polar explorer. The street leading into it is named after another Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, and it is lined with shops, bars and restaurants. The first crossroads is found at one of two parallel streets that run through the prime central city area, Stortingsgata, named after the Parliament building and running parallel to Karl Johans Gate (for more information, click here).

National Theatre

On the left after crossing Stortingsgata is the National Theatre 2 [map], often called ‘Ibsen’s own’ after Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The National Theatre opened in 1899 as the country’s premier stage. It has been funded by the state since 1927, with its director and board appointed by the Ministry of Culture. The baroque-inspired building features the names of the three authors and playwrights over the entrance­ whose works were performed on opening night: Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903) and Ludvig Holberg. Statues of Ibsen and Bjørnson stand on either side of the main entrance.

The National Theatre, home of Norwegian drama

Glyn Genin/Apa Publications

Inside, the theatre has three stages and a lounge in rococo style, with a large balcony facing towards the Parliament building further up a tree-lined mall in the city centre. It hosts the popular Ibsen Festival at the end of every summer, along with several productions of Ibsen plays throughout the year.

The plazas around the National Theatre also serve as a popular meeting place and a public transport hub in the centre of town. The airport train stops at the National Theatre station.

Across Stortingsgata from the National Theatre is the Theatre Café (Theatercaféen), a Viennese-style café dating from the time the theatre was built and adorned with drawings of Norway’s cultural celebrities over the years (for more information, click here). Further up Stortingsgata, towards the park surrounding the Royal Palace, you will pass several of Oslo’s main cinemas and just to the left, down Munkedamsveien, is the modernist Concert House (Konserthuset), home of the internationally acclaimed Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People was on the theatre’s opening bill

Glyn Genin/Apa Publications

Ibsen’s Homes

Directly behind the Concert House stands an ornate white building that dates from 1884, with an arcade of modern shops beneath it. This is Victoria Terrasse, a remodelled commercial and office complex that originally featured residential flats where Henrik Ibsen lived upon returning to Norway in the late 1800s.

In the Footsteps of Ibsen

Playwright Henrik Ibsen, Norway’s greatest literary hero, returned to Oslo in the 1890s after nearly 30 years of self-imposed exile, mostly in Germany and Italy. He viewed himself as a citizen of the world and had grown frustrated by Norwegian habits and local politics. Upon his return, he established a daily routine of walking from his flat on the main boulevard now named after him, to Oslo’s Grand Hotel for lunch at the Grand Café. His route is now decorated with citations from his works, emblazoned on the pavement. Fans are still fond of following in his footsteps, past the park around the palace and down Karl Johans Gate to the hotel. Ibsen died on 23 May 1906. His lavish ...