Gamle Bergen Museum

Gamle Bergen was established in 1949 on a park estate in Sandviken, gathering wooden buildings that were being demolished elsewhere in the city and rearranging them into streets and squares that reproduce the feel of Bergen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: about fifty houses in all, with a bakery, a dentist's surgery, a photographer's studio, a sailmaker, shops and homes ranging from merchant to working-class, most furnished to a specific decade. Guides in period clothing show the interiors in summer. The site sits above the fjord with gardens and a view over the water, and it is close enough to central Bergen for a short bus ride, though the buildings are open only in the summer season.

What you actually see

• The recreated streets - about fifty relocated wooden houses in a town plan.
• The furnished interiors - homes and shops set in specific decades.
• The trade premises - bakery, dentist, photographer and sailmaker.
• The park setting - gardens above the fjord north of the city.

When to go

May to September, when the houses are open and guided; outside that season only the grounds can be walked, with the interiors closed. Bergen rain is frequent, and much of the visit is outdoors between buildings.

Honest expectations

Interiors are accessible only on guided tours, which run to a schedule and in Norwegian as well as English. The season is short. The grounds are free to walk but the buildings are the point, and they are locked out of season.

Nearby

Sandviken and Stoltzekleiven lie south; central Bergen and Bryggen are ten minutes by bus.