Most visitors meet Ekeberg by accident. They step off a tram a few minutes from Oslo Central Station, climb a slope of pine and oak, and turn around to find the whole city laid out below them, from the Opera House roof to the islands of the inner fjord.
Ekebergparken is what Oslo did with that view. Since 2013 the wooded hillside has been an open-air sculpture park, free to enter and open around the clock. But the hill was a lookout, a farm, a picnic ground and a source of local legend long before the first bronze arrived.
A hill older than the city below it
The name tells you what the slope once looked like. In Old Norse it was Eikaberg, roughly "oak hill", and Snorri Sturluson mentions the area in his sagas of the Norwegian kings.
People were here much earlier than that. The Ekeberg area holds Bronze Age ritual sites and Iron Age grave mounds, which makes it one of the oldest inhabited places in Oslo. Small cup marks are still visible in the bedrock inside the park if you look closely at the bare rock between the trees.
In the Middle Ages the land belonged to Hovedøya Abbey, the Cistercian monastery on the island you can see from the top of the hill. The farm was later taken over by the Crown, and from the eighteenth century it was run by private owners.
That makes Ekeberg a natural companion to the streets at its foot. The ruins of medieval Oslo lie just below, and our walk through Oslo Old Town explains how that first city grew up between the hill and the water.
Painters, poets and a troll inside the hill
By the nineteenth century the slope had become a public open space, and writers came up to look at the town. Henrik Wergeland wrote about it, and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen collected the local folklore about the Ekeberg troll said to live inside the hill.
Hans Christian Andersen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson are said to have struck up their friendship while admiring the view. The air was considered so clean that the hillside was recommended to people suffering from tuberculosis.
The most famous link, though, is a painting. The scene in Edvard Munch's The Scream is generally identified with the road along the Ekeberg ridge, with the fjord and the city spread out under a blood-red sky.
Today the park plays openly with that link. Marina Abramović created a site-specific work called The Scream here for the opening in 2013. Standing at the railing with the fjord below, it is easy to see why the painting keeps being tied to this hill.
How the sculpture park came about
The modern park was the idea of Christian Ringnes, an Oslo property developer and art collector. His foundation paid for the sculptures and their upkeep, while the land itself remains owned by the City of Oslo.
The plan was controversial. Turning a hillside that Oslo had used freely for generations into an art park took a long public debate, and the park finally opened on 26 September 2013.
At the opening 31 sculptures were in place. The agreement with the city set aside NOK 350 million for buying more works, up to a total of eighty, and for running the park for at least fifty years.
The result is less like a museum than a forest with surprises in it. Paths wind between trees and across open lawns, and the art appears one piece at a time rather than all at once.
What to look for on a walk
The collection mixes old masters with contemporary artists. Near the paths you can find Auguste Rodin's Eva from 1881, Renoir's Venus Victrix, a pair of figures by Gustav Vigeland and Salvador Dalí's Venus de Milo with drawers, cast from a 1936 design.
Later names include Lynn Chadwick, Fernando Botero, Damien Hirst, Jaume Plensa and the duo Elmgreen & Dragset, whose bronze Dilemma shows a boy hesitating on a diving board that faces the fjord. Tony Cragg's dark, twisting Cast Glances stands on the lawn not far from the main path.
Some of the most memorable works are barely sculptures at all. Fujiko Nakaya's fog work drifts through the trees, and Dan Graham's glass pavilion reflects visitors and landscape at the same moment.
James Turrell has two light installations here, Skyspace: The Color Beneath and Ganzfeld: Double Vision. They have their own access rules, and the park runs free public tours on Sundays between 11:00 and 16:00, so it is worth checking the schedule before you go.
If you are drawn by the idea of the park at night, Tony Oursler's light projection in the woods is one of the works that comes alive after dark. The park also runs guided evening walks focused on light, which is a very different experience from a bright summer afternoon.
The viewpoints over the fjord
The view is the reason many people come back. From the upper slopes you look straight down onto Bjørvika, the Opera House and the new waterfront, with the medieval ruins of Middelalderparken at the foot of the hill.
Further out, the islands of the inner fjord line up one behind another. On a clear day you can follow the water south past Hovedøya and the smaller islands toward the hills on the far shore.
If those islands tempt you, our guide to Oslo's island ferries covers the short boat rides from the harbour below.
The main lookout sits in front of Ekebergrestauranten, but there are wooden benches and rock ledges all along the ridge. Late afternoon tends to give the best light, when the sun drops behind the western side of the city.
Ekebergrestauranten and the museum
The white building on the edge of the slope is Ekebergrestauranten, a functionalist restaurant designed by the architect Lars Backer and completed in 1929. Backer gave it flat roofs, a corner tower and large windows so that as many tables as possible faced the view.
For decades it was one of Oslo's most popular places to dance. It fell into disrepair in the 1980s and closed in 1997, before a careful restoration reopened it in 2005. The building is now protected as cultural heritage.
Just above the Ekebergparken tram stop is Lunds hus, a white wooden villa from 1891. It holds the park's small museum and shop, with a free exhibition on the nature and history of the area, maps of the sculpture trail and coffee.
The museum is usually open Wednesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 16:00, and nearby Karlsborg Spiseforretning serves food on weekends. Opening hours shift with the season, so check them before planning a meal around them.
Getting there by tram, bus or on foot
Trams 13 and 19 toward Ljabru stop at Ekebergparken, only a few minutes from the city centre. Buses 34 and 74 stop at Ekeberg Camping, a short walk from the park.
The tram itself has a story. The Ekeberg Line opened in 1917, built by a private company on its own right of way, survived closure threats in 1967 and 1973, and since 2020 has run through the new Bjørvika district. Our piece on how Oslo's trams, ferries and metro fit together puts it in the wider picture.
For a slower arrival, take the steps near the Oslo Hospital tram stop and follow Kjærlighetsstien, the Love Path. It runs parallel to Kongsveien up the slope and ends at the viewpoint in front of the restaurant.
A few practical tips
The park is free and never closes, but the paths are steep in places and can be slippery after rain or in winter. Good shoes are the most useful thing you can bring.
Allow at least two hours if you want to see a good share of the sculptures, and longer if you plan to stop at the museum or eat at the restaurant. A printed or downloaded map helps, because the works are spread across a large area of forest.
Ekeberg works well as a half-day pairing with the Old Town below. Walk the medieval ruins in the morning, ride the tram up for lunch and the view, and come back down on foot as the light changes over the fjord.
About Sofia Berg
Sofia Berg is a lifelong Oslo resident and travel writer with a passion for uncovering the city's hidden gems. She has been exploring and writing about Oslo for over ten years.