Aker Brygge, Tjuvholmen and the Astrup Fearnley Museum

Beginning immediately west of the National Museum and the island ferry piers at Rådhusbrygge, the historic brick mechanical workshops of Aker Brygge and the artificial canal islands of Tjuvholmen form Oslo's sunniest west-facing waterfront promenade. Because the boardwalk faces south-west across the inner fjord toward the wooded Bygdøy peninsula, it catches the afternoon sun longer than anywhere else in the city centre.

From Aker Brygge's shipyard halls to Tjuvholmen's canals

For over a century until 1982, Aker Brygge was the Akers Mekaniske Verksted shipyard. Today its preserved red-brick industrial riveting halls and towering cranes frame a pedestrian avenue of seafood brasseries, outdoor bars and floating restaurant barges along Stranden. While the main waterfront strip of Aker Brygge can feel corporate at lunchtime, keep walking five minutes further out across the narrow footbridges onto Tjuvholmen ("Thief Islet").

Designed by twenty different Scandinavian and international architects across three interconnected islets linked by glass-and-timber pedestrian bridges, Tjuvholmen blends car-free residential canals, commercial contemporary art galleries (such as Peder Lund and Brandstrup), coffee bars and a slender 54-metre glass observation lift (the Tjuvtitten tower, open seasonally).

Astrup Fearnley Museet and Tjuvholmen Sjøbad

At the very tip of Tjuvholmen, where the inner harbour opens onto the Oslofjord, stands the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano in 2012. A sweeping, curved double-glass roof shaped like a billowing ship's sail spans two timber-clad pavilions separated by a narrow tidal canal:

• The Permanent Collection and Changing Exhibitions: holds one of Northern Europe's boldest private collections of international contemporary art from the 1980s to the present, including works by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Anselm Kiefer and Norwegian contemporary artists.
• Tjuvholmen Sculpture Park and City Beach (Tjuvholmen Sjøbad): surrounding the museum on the outer breakwater is a free outdoor sculpture lawn (with works by Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Franz West) leading down to a small sandy beach, wooden sunbathing steps and deep-water swimming ladders looking straight across at the medieval walls of Akershus Fortress.