Trondheim keeps its culture in painted timber and concrete alike: a national museum of decorative art, Norway's rock archive in a glowing cantilever, a symphony orchestra in Olavshallen, and artist-run spaces in a self-governed wooden neighbourhood.
Norway's third-oldest art museum, founded 1845, holds roughly 4,500 works — Munch lithographs, Nordenfjeldske landscape painting and Håkon Bleken's charcoals. Tue-Fri 10-16, Sat-Sun 11-16, closed Mondays. Ticket covers TKM Gråmølna too.
The National Museum of Decorative Arts, in a 1968 building on Munkegata, shows Hannah Ryggen's political tapestries, a room of Art Nouveau interiors by Henry van de Velde and Norway's finest silver collection from Trondheim's goldsmith trade.
Trondheim kunstmuseum's contemporary wing occupies a converted grain mill on the Nedre Elvehavn quayside, with the Håkon Bleken donation and rotating shows of Norwegian video, installation and photography in raw industrial halls.
Norway's officially sanctioned experimental housing area: a saved block of 19th-century workers' timber houses run as a self-governed neighbourhood, with an experimental building school, Ramp bar, a small cinema and murals on every gable.
Norway's national museum of popular music sits under a glowing cantilevered 'top box' clad in perforated panels at Brattørkaia. Six floors, one per decade from the 1950s, with playable instruments, a karaoke booth and the Hall of Fame.
Norway's national museum of music, in an 18th-century manor at Lade, keeps some 2,000 instruments. Guided tours through the historic rooms include live demonstrations on harpsichord, clavichord and square piano by the musician-guides.
Founded 1937, this is Norway's largest regional theatre and its courtyard holds Gamle Scene from 1816 — the oldest surviving theatre building in Scandinavia still in use, a wooden baroque-style hall seating about 200 under painted ceilings.
The 1,260-seat main hall of Trondheim's concert house, opened 1989, is home to Trondheim Symfoniorkester & Opera and hosts the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival. A smaller 600-seat hall handles jazz and contemporary programmes.
An open-air museum of about 80 relocated buildings around the ruins of King Sverre's 1180s castle, including the Haltdalen stave church from around 1170 — one of the oldest surviving stave churches in Norway — plus a 1959 town street.
The car-free wooden quarter east of the Nidelv, saved from a 1970s motorway plan by resident protest, is now a run of galleries, ceramic studios, second-hand bookshops and the Sykkelheisen Trampe bicycle lift up Brubakken.
The university museum, rooted in the 1760 Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters — Norway's oldest scientific institution — shows Trøndelag archaeology, Sámi ethnography and church art in halls at Kalvskinnet.
The round red wooden student society building from 1929 runs its own concert halls, debate stage and the biennial UKA festival, Norway's largest cultural student festival, drawing over 100,000 visitors across three weeks each odd year.