Bergen: What to See and How Locals Actually Do It

The row of narrow wooden buildings along the eastern side of the harbour is what everyone comes for. It was the trading post of the Hanseatic League, the German merchant network that controlled the North Sea dried-fish trade for four centuries, and it has burned down and been rebuilt repeatedly on the same foundations, most recently after a fire in 1955.

The front row is the photograph. The interesting part is behind it: narrow passages between leaning wooden galleries, worn stairs, overhanging upper floors, and workshops in the back. Walk into the alleys. Most visitors photograph the façade and leave, which is the wrong way round.

Two things worth adding. The Bryggens Museum, built over the excavation that followed the 1955 fire, shows the medieval town beneath the current one. The Hanseatic Museum next door reconstructs how the German merchants and their apprentices actually lived, which was cold, dark and strictly hierarchical. Check opening arrangements before you go, as parts of these buildings have been under restoration in recent years.

The funicular from the centre takes about six minutes and puts you on a wooded hilltop directly above the city, with a view over the roofs, the harbour and the islands. There is a café, a playground and a network of walking trails going further up into the forest.

The local move is to take the funicular up and walk down, which takes half an hour on a well-made path and costs nothing. If the queue for the funicular is long, the walk up is steep but perfectly manageable.

The highest of Bergen's seven mountains, reached by cable car from outside the centre. Higher, wilder and considerably less busy than Fløyen. Serious walkers do the ridge walk between Ulriken and Fløyen, which takes several hours and needs proper footwear and a check of the forecast; the top is exposed and the weather turns fast.

The Fisketorget on the harbour has been in the same place for centuries and is now largely a tourist operation with prices to match. It is worth walking through, and the covered market hall next to it is better than the outdoor stalls.

If you want to eat well rather than photogenically, look at what the city eats: fish soup, which is creamy and served everywhere and is genuinely excellent; skillingsbolle, the cinnamon bun that is a Bergen speciality; and whatever whitefish is on the day's menu at a normal restaurant away from the water. Norway is expensive and the harbour is the most expensive part of it.

The peninsula west of the centre, with steep lanes of small painted wooden houses, an aquarium at the tip and a public sea-water pool that opens in summer. This is where Bergen looks like people live in it.

The fortress at the harbour mouth, with Håkon's Hall, a thirteenth-century royal banqueting hall, and the Rosenkrantz Tower. Both were badly damaged in a 1944 explosion in the harbour and rebuilt.

Edvard Grieg's villa outside the city, with his composing hut on the water and a small concert hall where recitals are held in summer. Grieg is to Bergen roughly what Mozart is to Salzburg, and the house is a short bus or light-rail ride away.

Four museum buildings around the city lake, holding one of the larger art collections in the Nordic countries, including a significant group of Edvard Munch works. A good rainy-day plan, and it will rain.

Bergen is one of the wettest cities in Europe and the locals have made peace with it. There are public umbrella dispensers, everyone owns proper waterproofs rather than a fashion raincoat, and nothing is cancelled because of weather.

Plan accordingly: bring a waterproof jacket and shoes you do not mind soaking, keep an indoor option in reserve for each half day, and do the mountain when the sky clears rather than when your itinerary says so. A dry morning in Bergen is a resource to spend immediately.

Bergen is the usual base for the fjords. Day trips run to the Hardangerfjord and, further out, to the Sognefjord and the Nærøyfjord, most commonly as a combination of train, bus and boat. Book ahead in summer and treat a fjord day as a full day, not an afternoon.

Bergen's centre is small and the good parts, Bryggen, the alleys behind it, Nordnes, the fortress, are within twenty minutes of each other. A city game gives you a route between them with something to solve at each stop, which suits a city where the interesting details are in the back lanes rather than on the main front.

A shape that survives Bergen weather: Bryggen and its alleys in the morning, the museums or KODE if it is raining, up Fløyen the moment the sky clears, and dinner away from the harbour. If you want the morning to have a route, here is how our games work, and you can get in touch about organising one for a group. Travelling on through Europe? Our guide to the many sides of Zurich covers another city built between water and mountains.