Nordnes School opened its doors for the first time on 17 August 1903. 1800 pupils in 52 classes started school that day. The school’s first headmaster, Rasmus Hille and his pupils filled the school both in the mornings and in the afternoons. A hundred years later some 250 pupils fight for room in the same school.

The only thing left from Nikolaikirken, St Nikolai’s Church, is the name of the street that leads past the church’s location in past times. In the Middle Ages the church was used as a lookout for fires, but probably the Reformation made the churche redundant.

Today the Bergen County Jail is an incipient ruin next door to the new Town Hall. Once it was a top modern prison with facilities still new to many citizens in Bergen. The first prisoners were jailed there in 1867, and the last prisoners moved out in 1990. Since then, the old jail building has become an overgrown ghost house.

If you one day found yourself being a slave at Bergenhus Fort and Castle, you had turned into a criminal of great proportions, such as a notorius thief or a killer. The Slave prison was not a place where the rehabilitation of criminals was a highly regarded philosophy. But if anything at all was to soften the hardened criminal’s heart, it would have to be the words of the Lord. In 1840 two rooms in the crypt of Håkon’s Hall were turned into a church for the slaves.

The little lookout post at Fredriksberg Fortress still stands. Little else gives testimony to the fact that the fortress also has played its part in protecting Bergen from devastating fires. When Bergen Fire Brigade was modernized after a big fire in 1901, Fredriksberg Fortress was turned into a small fire station and lookout post.

St Katarina’s hospital was as far as we know the first health care institution in Bergen. It was built at Sandbro during the first part of the 13th century. The hospital burnt during the city fire in 1248. It was rebuilt behind the Cathedral in 1266 and stayed a hospital for leprosy patients, a poor house and a hospital for other gravely sick people until 1771.

Childbirth has always been associated with danger for the life and health for both mother and child. A number of complications may arise in the process. When the combined midwife school and birth clinic was established in Bergen in 1861, the vast majority of children were born at home, with family and friends to help them into the world. 

There are no visible remains from Munkeliv Monastery today. The remains from the large monastery is found below ground in the square that is called Klosteret – The Monastery. In the Middle Ages, Munkeliv Monastery was situated on an elevated spot, with its walls and towers overlooking the landscape. Monks, and later nuns, lived in Munkeliv in peaceful work, study and prayer – but had also to endure fires and fights.

The history of the Rosenkrantz Tower dates back to around 1270. The tower grew taller and taller over the centuries, to send warnings of fear to uninvited military guests and to make a political statement towards the Hanseatic League. The view from the tower is amazing. From the rooftop one can see the whole town, the harbour, the coastline and the islands off the coast of Bergen. In the basement of the Rosenkrantz Tower there is a dungeon. The people kept there did not have much else in view than torture or execution.