Oslo’s urban art bonanza

Not all art is meant to be hung indoors in a gallery. One of the pleasures of strolling down the streets of Oslo is chancing upon one of the enormous murals and graffiti walls that decorate parts of the city, often filling entire walls with colour and life.

For completists, street art enthusiasts and those in the market for a nice route for their Sunday stroll, VisitOSLO has curated a selection of the city’s best urban art in an interactive overview that contains everything from location to artist name and year.

“We decided our presentation should be a map that collects and showcases the artwork digitally, while being easily accessible to anyone who wishes to head out to see it for themselves”, VisitOSLO content manager Kjersti Stensrud says to the site.

While the notorious classic “Kilroy was here” is nowhere to be found, the map includes noted Norwegian artists like Steffen Kverneland and Dolk alongside international names such as Alice Pasquini from Italy and Phlegm from the UK (see header image).

Oslo has a particularly dense collection of street art in the neighbourhoods of Grünerløkka and Tøyen, but there is also a lot of it spread across the city centre. The murals have mostly been put up legally, but the list also includes some traditional graffiti walls like the ones near Hausmania.

For those about to put on their best walking shoes, VisitOSLO also recommends taking any eastbound metro train and start your explorations from the metro stop Tøyen. Tøyen is a multicultural neighbourhood particularly rich in urban art and even aims at becoming Scandinavia’s largest outdoor gallery before the Munch Museum leaves the area in 2021.