Natural History Museum in Oslo, Natural history museum in Tøyen district, Oslo, Norway.
The Natural History Museum in Oslo is a science museum in the Tøyen district that displays animals, rocks, minerals, and climate-related topics across several buildings. The collections, managed by the University of Oslo, hold millions of specimens gathered from around the world over many generations.
The museum was founded in 1814, the same year as the Norwegian constitution, and was built as part of the newly established University of Oslo. Over the following century, new buildings and the botanical garden were added to the site, gradually shaping it into its current form.
The museum sits in the Tøyen neighborhood and is closely tied to the botanical garden that surrounds it, which locals use as a green walkway through the city. The garden includes greenhouses filled with plants from distant parts of the world, open to visitors alongside the museum buildings.
The site is made up of several separate buildings and an outdoor garden, so it helps to pick up a map at the entrance to find your way around. Comfortable shoes are a good idea, especially if you plan to walk through the garden as well.
The botanical garden on the grounds holds a cutting from one of the trees that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 and later regrew. The tree descended from that cutting still grows in the garden today and can be seen by visitors.
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