Stavanger

Small centre, big hinterland

Stavanger's old core is tiny — you can cross it in fifteen minutes — and it splits into three characters. Gamle Stavanger, west of the harbour, is 173 restored 18th and 19th-century white wooden houses on cobbled lanes, the largest surviving wooden settlement in northern Europe. Vågen, the harbour itself, holds the restaurants and the Sunday-night noise. Øvre Holmegate, one street inland, is the deliberately colour-painted café street that every guidebook photographs.

North Sea oil arrived in 1969 and rebuilt the local economy; the Norwegian Petroleum Museum on the waterfront explains it with unusual honesty, including the environmental arguments, and is far more interesting than it sounds.

Things to do

• Norwegian Petroleum Museum. Drilling platforms, escape capsules and a frank account of how oil changed Norway's politics.
• Street art. Stavanger hosts the Nuart festival each September; large works are scattered through the centre and Storhaug. Free walking maps at the tourist office.
• Lysefjord cruise. Three-hour return sailings pass beneath Preikestolen and the Hengjane waterfall. The view up at the pulpit is as good as the view down from it.
• Preikestolen. The 8 km return hike from Preikestolen Fjellstue, 40 minutes from the city — see the dedicated file.
• Kjeragbolten. Longer and harder: 10 km, 800 m ascent, and a boulder wedged in a chasm 984 m above the fjord. Season is June to September only.
• Sverd i fjell. Three 10-metre bronze swords driven into rock at Hafrsfjord, marking the 872 battle that unified Norway.
• Jæren beaches. Twenty kilometres of Atlantic sand south of the city — Solastranden and Orrestranden, popular with kitesurfers.

Getting there and around

Questions we get asked