The prize explained, the laureates listed, and enough honesty about the controversial ones to be worth the ticket.
The centre opened in 2005 in the former Vestbanen railway station on the square in front of the City Hall, where the prize is awarded every 10 December.
Why Norway
Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895 left his fortune to five prizes. Four — physics, chemistry, medicine and literature — were to be awarded by Swedish institutions. The peace prize was to be awarded by a committee of five chosen by the Norwegian Storting.
He never explained why. Norway was in union with Sweden at the time and had no independent foreign policy, which is one theory — a smaller, less militarised partner might be seen as more disinterested. Another is that Nobel admired the Norwegian parliament’s early engagement with international arbitration. There is no documentary answer.
The committee is elected by parliament but decides independently, a distinction Norway insists on loudly whenever a decision causes a diplomatic problem — as with the 2010 award to Liu Xiaobo, after which China froze relations with Norway for six years.
What is in it
The Nobel Field — the permanent display of every laureate since 1901, presented as an array of illuminated screens in a darkened room. It is visually striking and thin on content.
The annual laureate exhibition, which changes each year and is properly researched. This is the reason to go, and the quality varies with the subject rather than with the museum.
Alfred Nobel’s story, including the fact that he invented dynamite, made a fortune from armaments, and reportedly established the prizes after reading his own premature obituary describing him as a merchant of death. The centre does not skip this.
Temporary exhibitions on conflict, human rights and journalism, often photographic, and often very good.
The honest view
The centre is small and the admission is not trivial by the standards of what it contains.
It also does something worth crediting: it does not pretend the prize has an unblemished record. Kissinger in 1973, Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 and what followed, Obama in 2009 less than a year into his presidency, Abiy Ahmed in 2019 — these are addressed rather than quietly omitted, and the committee’s own reasoning is presented alongside the criticism.
If that interests you, it is ninety worthwhile minutes. If you were expecting a general museum of peace, it is less than that.
Practical
Charged. Closed one day a week in the low season.
There is a good bookshop and a café.
It is on the same square as the National Museum and a few minutes from Akershus and the shrimp boats, which makes an easy afternoon.
Around 10 December the whole area is given over to the ceremony, the torchlight procession and the security around them.
