The spiral around the rock
The path wraps the hill instead of climbing it directly.
Helge Høifødt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Premeditated — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Elifir — CC BY-SA 4.0
Oslomarka is the belt of forest surrounding the city on three sides, larger in area than the built city itself. Law protects it from development, and the metro reaches its edge at several points — meaning you ride twenty minutes from the centre of the capital and step out at a forest of lakes, walking tracks and cabins serving food. In winter the tracks become floodlit ski trails. This relationship between a city and its forest is what sets Oslo apart from most European capitals, and Stovner is one of the ways in.
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Stovnertårnet is not a tower in the usual sense but a **raised walkway** that spirals up around a rock hill in the Stovner district of north-eastern Oslo, reaching its summit without a single step. The architectural idea is the point of the place: a path two hundred and fifty metres long at a gentle gradient that a wheelchair or a pushchair can climb the whole way, ending at a platform looking over eastern Oslo and the forest. The top of the hill, in other words, was made available to people who cannot climb it — which is why the project was noticed outside Norway when it opened in 2017. The setting is not a tourist destination: a residential district well out from the centre, twenty minutes on metro line 5. But it is worth knowing for a different reason — it is a good example of what Oslo does in its outer districts rather than only in its centre. Free and always open.
The path wraps the hill instead of climbing it directly.
Eastern Oslo and the forest from above.
Stovner park, eastern Oslo