Oslo City Hall

Outside Oslo City Hall. The clock on the wall is a 16 ft in diameter astronomical clock. See Oslo City Hall on Wikipedia for a great close up of it. It consists of 2 dials; the outer with Roman numerals and the inner with Arabian number 1-12. It has four hands: time, dragon, sun and moon. The astrological sign dial moves and it takes 23 hours, 56 min and 4 sec (called the star day) to move around one time. The 'sun' hand takes 24 hours. In a year, the sun hand will be caught up by the astrological sign dial one after the other.

This is inside the big hall at the Oslo City Hall. This is the very place where the Nobel's Peace Prize is given out on the 10th of December every year to the elected recipient.

The art in the City Hall is wonderful. In 1937 a competition was opened for artists to submit their works. Eight painters and seventeen sculptors were hired to decorated this wonderful building. The City Hall was opened in 1950.

After all this history and fabulous art, we met an old friend from Kristiansand for lunch at 'Aker Brygge'. This area has fashionable apartments, lots of shopping and wonderful restaurants. We had Italian with Terje. From Aker Brygge you can take a passenger boat to various places in the Oslo Fjord. The ferries in the inner harbor is cancelled in the winter time due to ice on the water. People have to take the bus instead.