I posted photos of the Opera House last year, but I think it looks different with changes in light and weather. We booked for one of the many tours in English. It was led by a man named Dag whose love of the arts and the house shone through everything he said. No photos were allowed in the areas behind stage sadly. About 85% of the Opera House’s budget comes from the government,making tickets affordable for all to see concerts and ballet there!!The workshops and practice theaters are larger than the actual main hall. So many creative people were at work sewing, making models of sets, moving huge walls on wheels to make space for new designs, welding, and meeting over sketches and plans. Will was able to get a few photos peering inside when we walked along one back side of the building- amazing!
I had two sculpture parks on my wishlist for Oslo. Ekeberg Sculpture Park is located on a hill that gives great views of Oslo. The park is free and the 43+ sculptures are scattered about on grass and in the forest. I’m addling links to the titles of works below – the info about the artist(s) is really good
I’ll include one more we came upon as we wandered the forest part of the park. It was striking and heartfelt.
Vigeland Park is the other sculpture garden we walked to at another end of the city. All of the sculptures are the life work of Gustav Vigeland. Again, the park is free and open all the time. All of this work is of human figures showing the range of human emotions. It was a gorgeous sunny day when we were there along with many other people. The sculptures don’t have any written info with them. I felt like I just wandered along staring and considering what each figure was feeling. We did look up some of the museum info later as we walked to get some of the history. Next time I think we’ll go to the museum to see photos and drawings about how the park was planned and built.
These are just a glimpse of the 200 sculptures in the park. We did see a couple of his other works in other places in Oslo, and there are more in other parts of Norway and Stockholm. What a prolific artist.
Oslo has so much art all over the city outside of these 2 parks. It’s very apparent that the city and the country encourage and support artists of all kinds. It’s refreshing to see that countries can be so arts-minded!
We saw these incredible wire mesh figures hanging high above a walkway in a busy restaurant area.
These last two figures were on the restroom doors at a great Italian restaurant.
Will gets the credit for most of these photos- he tends to get more good photos at times.
Birdgirl’s travels 