Discover Stavanger

About Stavanger

Stavanger is Norway's oil and energy capital and its fourth city — a colourful, prosperous southwestern coastal town with a beautifully preserved wooden Old Town (Gamle Stavanger) of around 173 white clapboard 18th- and 19th-century houses, more than anywhere else in Northern Europe. The compact medieval centre revolves around the country's oldest cathedral, Stavanger Domkirke (consecrated 1125, still in continuous use), and the lively Vagen harbour where colourful sardine-canning warehouses have become bars, restaurants, and design shops. The Norwegian Petroleum Museum on the harbour — a startling collection of oil-rig hardware and offshore-platform models telling Norway's transformation from poor fishing nation to oil-rich social-democratic powerhouse since the 1969 Ekofisk discovery — is genuinely fascinating. Modern Stavanger has a thriving food scene (it was UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in 2025); the brilliant 'Numusen' museum at the Konstmuseum holds the country's third-largest art collection. But the real reason to come is the surrounding Lysefjord — a 42km branch of the deep blue fjord system, accessed by boat from Stavanger harbour, with the spectacular flat-topped Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock, a 4-hour return hike, 604m vertical cliff above the fjord) and the even more dramatic Kjeragbolten (a wedged boulder 1,084m above the water) two of the most photographed hikes in the world.