Bergen travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bergen

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1. 

   1

   Bryggen

   A row of timber gable-fronted warehouses on the harbour, the surviving quarter of the Hanseatic trading post that ran the Norwegian dried-fish trade for four centuries. It has burned repeatedly — most recently in 1955 — and been rebuilt on the same foundations each time; World Heritage since 1979.

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2. 

   2© Erniee_jo (talk · contribs) · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fantoft Stave Church

   A stave church of about 1170 moved here from Sogn in 1883 to save it, and burned to the ground by an arsonist in 1992 — one of a series of church fires linked to the Norwegian black metal scene. What stands is an exact reconstruction finished in 1997.

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3. 

   3© Morten Dreier · CC BY-SA 2.5

   Bergen Cathedral

   The cathedral of Bergen, first built in the twelfth century and rebuilt after each of the fires that repeatedly took the city. A cannonball fired during the battle of Vågen in 1665, when the English attacked a Dutch fleet in the harbour, is still lodged in the outer wall.

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4. 

   4© Andreas Sandberg · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Troldhaugen

   House near Bergen where Edvard Grieg lived from 1885 until his death in 1907. He composed in a hut by the water, and he and his wife are buried in the cliff below.

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5. 

   5© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   University Museum of Bergen

   The university museum, covering anthropology, archaeology, botany, geology, zoology and cultural history in a group of nineteenth-century buildings. Its natural history halls were restored to their original Victorian arrangement rather than modernised.

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6. 

   6

   St Mary's Church

   The oldest building in Bergen, a Romanesque church of about 1180, which the German Hanseatic merchants used as their own for three centuries — services were held in German until 1868. Its pulpit was their gift and is the most elaborate baroque object in the city.

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7. 

   7

   Bergenhus Fortress

   A fortress at the harbour mouth whose Håkon's Hall of 1261 was built for a royal wedding and is one of the oldest secular stone buildings in Norway. A Dutch ammunition ship blew up alongside it in 1944 and wrecked both hall and tower; both were rebuilt.

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8. 

   8© Nina Aldin Thune · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene

   A museum in one of the Bryggen tenements, kept as the German merchants left it — the office, the sleeping cupboards and the assembly rooms where they ate, since fire risk meant no heating or cooking was allowed in the warehouses themselves.

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9. 

   9© Daniel Milner from Pauillac, France This is a retouched picture, which me · CC BY 2.0

   Nordnes

   The peninsula that closes the western side of the harbour, with wooden houses in narrow lanes, the aquarium at its tip and a public sea-bathing pool. It burned in 1901 and was rebuilt in the same timber pattern.

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10. 

    10© HMPinnsvinet · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Saint Paul Catholic Church

    The Catholic church of Bergen, built in 1876 for a parish founded in 1858 when Norway readmitted Catholic worship. It now serves a large Polish, Filipino and Vietnamese congregation and runs a school beside it.

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1. 

   1© SinWin · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Fjell Fortress

   A fortress on the island of Sotra at Øygarden in Vestland in Norway. German forces built it during the Second World War as coastal battery 11/504.

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2. 

   2© Morten Dreier · CC BY-SA 2.5

   Nykirken

   A church first built in 1621 and rebuilt after fires and after the harbour explosion of 1944, standing on the Nordnes peninsula. Its plain octagonal tower is a landmark from the water.

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3. 

   3© W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St John's Church

   The largest church in Bergen, built in 1894 on the highest point of the centre so that its brick tower of sixty-one metres is visible from everywhere. Its three bells are the heaviest in the city.

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4. 

   4© Bjørn Christian Tørrissen · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Torgallmenningen

   The main square of Bergen in Norway. Shops line it and the seafarers' monument stands at one end.

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5. 

   5© Premeditated · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bergen Aquarium

   An aquarium at the tip of the Nordnes peninsula, opened in 1960, whose subject is the North Atlantic — cod, halibut, seals and penguins, with the fjord water pumped straight through the tanks.

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6. 

   6© Erik den yngre · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Bryggens Museum

   A museum built over the excavated foundations of medieval Bergen, exposed by the fire of 1955, with the twelfth-century walls and streets left in place under the building. The runic sticks found here — shopping notes, love letters, insults — are the best evidence of everyday medieval literacy anywhere.

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7. 

   7© Smtunli, Svein-Magne Tunli - http://www.tunliweb.no/SM/English/sm_eng.htm · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sverresborg

   A fortress and former castle site at Bergen in Norway. King Sverre built it at the end of the twelfth century, and it carries his name.

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   8

   Korskirken

   A church at the head of the Vågen whose oldest parts are twelfth century, extended into a cross plan in the 1600s. It now runs the city's social work among the homeless as much as regular services.

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   9

   Munkeliv Abbey

   A Benedictine abbey that stood at Nordnes in Bergen in Norway. It was the oldest, wealthiest and best documented in the country, but nothing of it is now visible.

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10. 

    10© This photo was taken by Nina-no. Please credit this photo Nina Aldin Thune in · CC BY-SA 2.5

    Nonneseter Abbey

    A Cistercian nunnery founded in the twelfth century and dissolved at the Reformation, of which one chapel and part of the church survive among railway lines and a bus station. The chapel is still used for services.

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