Ovre Holmegate

By the early 2000s Ovre Holmegate was a run-down street of empty shopfronts, and a local hairdresser, Tom Kjorsvik, proposed painting the whole run in strong colours to draw people back. The artist Craig Flannagan designed a scheme in 2005 with a specific colour for each building, and the shopkeepers carried it out. It worked commercially: the street filled with independent cafes, bars, a bookshop and small retailers, and it became the standard photograph of Stavanger, reproduced on postcards and in every guide. The buildings themselves are ordinary nineteenth-century timber, and the interest is entirely in the paint, which has been maintained and touched up since. The street is short, a couple of hundred metres.

What you actually see

• The painted facades - each building in a different strong colour.
• The independent shops - cafes, bars and small retailers along the run.
• The 2005 scheme - a designed colour plan carried out by the shopkeepers.
• The timber buildings - ordinary nineteenth-century structures beneath the paint.

When to go

Year-round; sunshine brings the colours out and Stavanger gets a fair amount of it by Norwegian standards. Evenings are busy with the bars. It takes twenty minutes to walk.

Honest expectations

The street is short and the appeal is purely visual, so it is a photograph rather than an experience. It is crowded when cruise ships call. Prices in the cafes are aimed at visitors.

Nearby

Gamle Stavanger is across the harbour; the cathedral and Breiavatnet lake are minutes away.