Capital, largest city, main port and chief industrial centre in the country, lying at the head of Oslo fjord on Norway's southeast coast.
The city was founded in 1048 by Harald Hardrade, king of Norway from 1046 to 1066, and prospered as a trading centre and port, becoming the Norwegian capital in 1299. Norway's principal fortress was built here at Akershus in the middle Ages. After a disastrous fire in 1624, the city was rebuilt and renamed Christiania (later Kristiania) after Christian IV, then king of both Norway and Denmark, but the name was changed back again in 1925.
The early town's industries developed along the banks of the Aker River, whose successive waterfalls could be used to drive water wheels. Around them, the houses of workers, merchants and government officials spread outwards through the lakes, forests and marshes behind the harbor. As a result of the sprawl, Oslo now covers more than 450 km2 (173 sq miles), making it one of the world's largest cities in area. But it retains a rural atmosphere outside the much smaller city centre because of large 'green belt' areas, used today by Oslo residents for hiking and skiing.
The city's spine is the avenue known as Karl Johansgate. It is named after King Karl XIV Johan, a French marshal under Napoleon who was elected Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810 and became King of Norway under the dual monarchy established at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. His palace in central Oslo is still the official residence of Norwegian monarchs. The avenue named after him links the palace to the city's main buildings: the cathedral (built in 1697), in front of which is a statue of King Christian IV; the central market; the original university buildings, founded in 1811; and the Stoning, the nation's parliament.
Around this core are theaters, museums and galleries - and nearby one devoted to the work of the Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1943). Nearby also is Frogner Park, filled with the works of the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943), and farther inland the soaring ramps of the ski jumps at Holmenkollen, where an annual jumping championship has been held since 1892.
The island of Bygdoy in the harbor houses a superb maritime exhibition which includes: restored Viking ships; the From, the ship used by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen for his voyage through the Arctic ice pack in 1893-6; the Gjoa, the ship used by Norway's Roald Amundsen when he became, in 1903, the first man to sail through the North-west Passage; and the Kon Tiki, the balsa wood raft on which the Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific from South America to Polynesia in 1947.
Oslo's manufactures include electrical equipment, metal goods, timber, dairy products, machine tools, chemicals, textiles and ships.
Locals hypothesize that the legacy of Italian blood and culture in Cologne, colonized by the Romans more than 1500 years ago, makes the people more jovial and lighthearted. Cologne is the largest city on the Rhine.
Kolsch is not only the dialect spoken here but, also the name of their own top-fermented beer. There are more than 4,000 pubs, restaurant's and brewery taverns in Cologne.
Unlike many of the world's large cities, Cologne, with a population of over a million, gets better every day, there are more things to do and see, more new and innovative buildings... more
Travel is an opportunity to learn, whether geography, languages, history or other subjects.
Cologne is situated on the beautiful Rhine River.