Lillehammer punches well above its weight for a town of 30,000. The two unmissable experiences are Maihaugen, one of northern Europe's finest open-air museums — including the Garmo Stave Church and the Norwegian Olympic Museum — and the 1994 Olympic venues clustered on the hillside above town, where you can take the chairlift to the top of the Lysgårdsbakken ski jumps or ride a wheeled bobsled down the Olympic track.
The Lillehammer Art Museum, with its Snøhetta building and strong collection of Norwegian 19th-century painting, is worth an hour or two. Storgata, the curving main street of 19th-century wooden buildings, connects the town's various points and is one of the best-preserved wooden streets in Norway.
In summer, the Skibladner paddle steamer — the world's oldest paddle steamer in regular service — crosses Lake Mjøsa to Hamar and back. In winter, Hafjell alpine centre (15 km north) offers downhill skiing, and the town fills up in March for the Birkebeiner cross-country ski race. Håkons Hall, the Viking-roofed Olympic ice arena, hosts ice hockey matches through the winter. The adjacent Kanthaugen Freestyle Arena hosted the 1994 aerials and moguls events.
The Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset lived in Lillehammer for over two decades; her home Bjerkebæk is now a museum, and the Norwegian Festival of Literature it hosts each spring is the town's biggest cultural event of the year.