Tyholmen Old Town

Tyholmen is the heart of old Arendal — a dense cluster of 17th and 18th-century white-painted timber buildings packed onto what was once an island in the harbour. Today it's connected to the town centre by bridges, but the character of a separate maritime community persists in the narrow lanes and the way almost every view ends at the water.

Walking through Tyholmen takes perhaps half an hour but rewards a slower pace. The buildings are varied — merchant houses, warehouses, a baroque town hall — and many are still in residential or commercial use, which keeps the area alive rather than museumified. The harbour front has cafes and restaurants with tables out in summer, and moored boats add to the maritime atmosphere.

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A story
Tyholmen was once a separate island — the bridges that connect it to the mainland were built progressively during the 17th and 18th centuries as the town grew. The tightly packed buildings survive because Arendal, unlike many Norwegian coastal towns, was spared the fires that destroyed older timber architecture elsewhere. The result is one of the most intact assemblages of 18th-century wooden urban architecture in Norway.

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