Norway is a fabulous country to visit, full of incredible scenery, food, culture and things to see and do. Oslo, the capital, has a population of around 700,000, and it frequently appears on “best place to live” and “best work-life balance” lists. Unfortunately for budget travellers like us, it also appears on lists for most expensive cities. We visited right at the start of our 15-month trip, so we were on a strict budget. Because of that, we’ve put together a list of great things to do in Oslo for free, so you can also visit without breaking the budget.

We did basically everything on this list and didn’t do any paid activities. However we thought we’d quickly mention some in case you’re not on as strict a budget. There’s the Munch Museum for 180 NOK, the Historical Museum of Oslo for 160 NOK, the Natural History Museum for 180 NOK and the Nobel Peace Center for 170 NOK. The Royal Palace, the Oslo Opera House, Frogner Manor and museums in the Akershus Fortress also have entry fees, however we will go into those below.

In this post:

1. Karl Johans Gate
2. The Royal Palace
3. Oslo Opera House
4. Akershus Fortress
5. Grünerløkka
6. Frogner Park
7. Ekebergparken
8. The Botanical Garden

The first thing you should do in Oslo for free is head to Karl Johans Gate, which is the main street in the city. This runs from the visitor centre and Oslo Central Station in the city right through to The Royal Palace. It is mostly a pedestrian only street, and has lots of impressive and colourful shops and restaurants along it. It takes between 20 to 30 minutes to walk up the street and goes past so many landmarks worth seeing.

Towards the visitors centre end, just slightly off the street, you’ll find the Oslo Domkirke or the Oslo Cathedral. It is open 10am to 4pm every day except Friday and is free to enter. Further up the street is Stortinget or Norwegian Parliament, which is a very impressive looking building. Beyond the parliament building towards the Royal Palace is the wonderful green part of the street.

In front of Stortinget is Stortingsparken which is a nice place to sit and admire the beautiful building. Nearby there is also a pond which becomes an ice skating rink in winter. Beyond that is the National Theatre, a beautiful 19th century building that opened in 1899. It has four different stages and is a great place to see theatre productions and local artists. Across the street is the faculty of law building of the University of Oslo which is another impressive looking building. Finally, you’ll reach the Palace Park surrounding the Royal Palace, which you can walk up to and admire.

Completed in 1849, the Royal Palace is the official residence of the Norwegian monarch. It is a beautiful building built in the Neo Classical style, with two different wings and three storeys. There’s lots of amazing rooms inside including the family dining room, the palace chapel and the great hall or ballroom. If you’re visiting in late June to the middle of August, you can go inside the palace, with tickets available from early March each year. These tours run 3 times an hour from 10am to 5pm everyday, however there are only 5 tours a day in English. The tours last 45 minutes, cost 230 NOK and you can find more information about them, including tickets, here.

Of course, the guided tours aren’t free, but the building is worth checking out from the outside too. You can also witness the changing of the guard which happens every day at 1:30pm and is completely free. It takes about 40 minutes and can be seen out the front of the Royal Palace. Also as mentioned before, surrounding the Palace is the Palace Park. It is one of Oslo’s largest and first created parks and is definitely worth a walk around. The park along with the Royal Palace is a great way to experience Oslo for free.

Home to the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, the Oslo Opera House is the largest cultural building in Norway. It is really large, with over 1100 rooms including three performance spaces, the main one holding over 1300 people. From the outside, it is visually a very cool looking building. The white exterior appears to rise out of the harbour, with the marble it’s covered in coming all the way from Italy. There’s also huge sections of windows to look out on the water from inside.

You can actually climb up the building to see a view of Oslo from the roof. Although if you’re visiting in winter like we did, please keep in mind that this walk on the marble gets EXTREMELY slippery. Of course, going inside the Opera House isn’t a free activity so we only visited the outside, which was very cool.

However you can go inside for both performances and just to check it out. The foyer is open from 11am to 10pm every day (except Sunday when it opens at midday), and the box office and shop are open till 4pm. There are two restaurants indoors (one seafood restaurant and a brasserie) and a couple of bars. If you want to buy tickets to a show, you can buy them here. There are also guided tours done in Norwegian, English and German which you can do. These last for 50 minutes, cost 150 NOK and tickets can be bought here.

The Akershus Fortress is a medieval castle built sometime in the 1290s. It’s a 15-20 minute walk from Oslo Central Station, is open every day and is free to enter. It was built as a residence for the royals and to protect the city. Since then it’s been used as a prison, and is now a military area and the office for the Prime Minister. You can also do guided tours of parts of the fortress for 150 NOK and they can be booked here.

As well as the fortress you can also find the Defence Museum and the Norwegian Home Front Museum here too. These have entry fees so you can visit if you’re interested but the fortress is a great place to wander around for free and there is a nice view from it too.

Grünerløkka is a great hip neighbourhood in the north of Oslo. Initially a working class neighbourhood, Grünerløkka has gone through a lot of gentrification and is now a really cool area to visit. It is full of great indie shops, cafes, restaurants, vintage stores, music venues and street art.

When we visited, we took the bus to the “Hausmanns bru” bridge where we joined the walk along the Akerselva river. This is a great peaceful walk that runs for 8km from near that bridge all the way to Maridalsvannet lake. However, the section to the south of Grünerløkka is only 1km and is a lovely walk along the water. We recommend wandering beside the water before heading up into the neighbourhood.

In Grünerløkka itself, there’s more wonderful green spaces such as Birkelunden Public Park, Olaf Ryes plass and Grünerhagen. The main shopping area is just above the Akerselva river and has lots of great places to visit whether you’re there during the day or night. If you’re into live music there’s a great venue called BLÅ along the river. Further along the river is Mathallen Oslo, which is a food court with lots of great local food and produce. We really enjoyed spending a couple of hours wandering around checking everything out and it really is a great thing to do in Oslo for free.

If you’ve read any of our other blog posts you’ll know that we absolutely love a park. It’s such a great way to break up the busy cities, and they’re almost always free. Oslo has some super interesting parks that are really worth visiting while you’re there.

Frogner Park is located a 25 minute walk west of The Royal Palace and is the largest park in Oslo. The park is free to visit but is part of Frogner Manor which is in the south of the park and can be visited for 60 NOK in summer. It also houses the Museum of Oslo, which is open 11am to 4pm Tuesday to Sunday and costs 120 NOK per person. However you can visit for free on the first Thursday of every month! It also has a café and museum shop that you can visit during the museums opening hours.

Apart from the manor, there’s playgrounds, a football stadium, tennis courts, a couple of pools. It also has a couple of places to eat and Norway’s biggest collection of roses with over 14,000 plants.

The most popular part of the park, however, is the Vigeland Sculpture Park. This is the section of Frogner Park that is covered in sculptures. It has more than 200 iron, bronze and granite sculptures by Gustav Vigeland, who lived from 1869 to 1943. These sculptures are dotted around 80 acres of space, including 58 on a bridge. The biggest one is the 14 meter monolith that is made up of 121 human figures towards the middle of the park. Around this monolith are heaps of other granite human sculptures, a lot of them in very entertaining poses.

It’s a great thing to do in Oslo for free just to spend an hour or so just wandering around admiring all the different sculptures.

Believe it or not, there is a second sculpture park in Oslo called Ekebergparken. The 25.5 acre area is located in a wooded part of the city on the other side of the Opera House to Frogner Park. When it opened in 2013 it had 31 sculptures but it’s now expanded to 47 from 43 different artists. It is open all day every day and is completely free to visit.

From the main station in Oslo, it’s a 35 minute minute walk into the park. We decided to walk, however we probably wouldn’t recommend it as it’s mainly up hill and alongside a main road. Instead, both the 13 and 19 trams do the journey which is way quicker and easier.

Close to the tram stop is Lund’s hus, a cute white Swiss style building built in 1891. It is open Tuesday to Sunday in high season, and Wednesday to Sunday in low season. This building acts as the visitor centre but also has a little museum too. It is free to enter and covers the history of the Ekeberg area as well as what nature you will find there. In Lund’s hus you’ll also find a little café for drinks and snacks as well as a little souvenir shop. Nearby Lund’s hus, there is a café called Karlsborg Spiseforretning and another building called Ekebergrestauranten with a fine dining restaurant.

The park itself is quite large and has heaps of paths through it to walk around and see the sculptures. As the park is up a hill, there are a couple of viewpoints to admire the wonderful view of the city from. It’s really a great free thing to do in Oslo and definitely worth a visit if you’ve got a spare couple of hours.

Right near the Grünerløkka neighbourhood to the north of the city is the Oslo Botanical Garden. It’s actually part of the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo and is the oldest scientific garden in Oslo. The museum is not free to enter, however the botanical garden is. It is open 7am to either 5pm or 9pm, depending on which season you visit in. It’s not too big but has around 35,000 plants from 7,500 different species. There’s also a scent garden, an arboretum, rare plants and some woven sculptures. We recommend you spend an hour or two wandering around the garden as it’s a great free thing to do in Oslo!

While it is an expensive city to visit, there are so many amazing things to do in Oslo for free. A walk down Karl Johans Gate leads to the Royal Palace, both wonderful places to check out. The Oslo Opera House and the Akershus Fortress are also great free places to check out and are both beautiful landmarks in the city. Of course there’s also some great parks like Frogner Park, Ekebergparken and the Oslo Botanic Garden. Lastly, make sure to check out the Grünerløkka neighbourhood for some great shops, cafes and a lovely river walk.

There’s more than enough to keep you entertained for a couple of days while you enjoy this beautiful and interesting city in Norway! If you’d like to see what we did from this list (and watch our time in the north of Norway too), check out our vlog:

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