Oslo City Hall

Every December 10th, in the main hall of this red-brick building, someone receives the Nobel Peace Prize. It's the only Nobel Prize not awarded in Stockholm, and nobody is entirely sure why. Alfred Nobel's will specified that a Norwegian committee should select the Peace Prize winner, but his reasoning died with him in 1896. The best guess is that Norway, then in union with Sweden, was considered less militaristic and more neutral — a slightly backhanded compliment that turned into one of the most prestigious ceremonies on earth.

Construction began in 1931, but the German occupation halted everything. For five years the building stood as an unfinished skeleton overlooking the harbor, a giant embarrassment in red brick. When it finally opened on 15 May 1950, it was timed to mark Oslo's 900th anniversary. The architects Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson designed something deliberately unlike the neoclassical Parliament and Palace nearby — this was muscular, modern, unapologetically working-class in its brick aesthetic. The two towers rise to 63 and 66 meters, and the eastern tower holds a carillon of 49 bells.

Step inside and the scale hits you. The main hall is enormous, covered in massive murals by Henrik Sørensen depicting Norwegian history, legend, and daily life — fishermen, factory workers, farmers — painted between 1938 and 1950. The art continues throughout the building with works by Edvard Munch, Per Krohg, and other Norwegian masters. The square outside is named after Fridtjof Nansen, the polar explorer who won the Peace Prize himself in 1922 for his work repatriating displaced people after World War I.

The building was controversial when new — many found it ugly. Now it's one of the most photographed buildings in Norway, largely because of ten minutes of television every December.