Trondheim was Norway's first capital, founded as Kaupangen in 997, and the medieval city still surfaces under its floors. Three days run from King Sverre's castle ruins and 1150s stone churches to a German U-boat bunker and the workers' timber quarters.
King Sverre Sigurdsson raised this hilltop fortress in 1183; the stone ruins crown an open-air museum of some 80 relocated buildings, including Haltdalen stave church from around 1170. Summer hours 10:00–17:00.
The university's science museum holds Trøndelag's archaeology: Viking-age swords from local grave finds, excavation material from the Kjøpmannsgata waterfront, and a Middle Ages hall tracing Nidaros from 997 onward.
Beneath the library lie the excavated walls and graves of St Olav's Church, raised around 1180 and pulled down after the Reformation. A glass floor lets you stand directly above the medieval burials in the nave.
The Romanesque stone core dates from the 1150s, making this Trondheim's second-oldest standing building. Coronation banquets were once held here; today it runs an open evening café serving the city's homeless.
Built 1682–1684 after the great fire and designed to hold the high ground east of the river, it broke the Swedish siege of 1718. Ten resistance members were shot at the wall between 1942 and 1945; a memorial marks the place.
Set in the world's northernmost synagogue, a railway station converted in 1925, the museum records the Trøndelag Jewish community: property seized, members deported in 1942, and the rebuilding by the few who returned.
A German U-boat pen built 1941–1943 with a concrete roof several metres thick that Allied bombs never pierced. Raised partly by forced labour, it now houses the Dora archive centre and the city's historic photo collections.
The column on the market square carries Olav Tryggvason, who founded Kaupangen at the mouth of the Nid in 997. The square beneath doubles as a working sundial, the statue's shadow falling on hour lines cut into the paving.
The craftsmen's and workers' district across the Nidelva, saved from a 1960s motorway scheme by residents' protest. Its leaning timber houses date largely from the 1700s, rebuilt after the fires of 1681 and 1841.
An execution site in Viking times, a Benedictine monastery from about 1100, prison of chancellor Peder Griffenfeld from 1680, and a German anti-aircraft position in 1940–1945. Ferries leave Ravnkloa hourly in summer.
The manor of naval hero Peter Wessel Tordenskiold's family, now Norway's national museum of music history, where guides play the instruments on the tour. The 1740s main house keeps its rococo rooms above the fjord.
A tight grid of small wooden houses laid out in the 1860s–1880s for dock and shipyard families, one of Europe's largest surviving timber quarters. Lademoen church, consecrated in 1905, anchors its eastern edge.