Bygdøy Peninsula

Bygdøy has belonged to Norwegian royalty almost continuously since 1305, when King Haakon V gave it to Queen Eufemia. No other country property in Norway has been in royal hands for so long. Today it's Oslo's museum peninsula — seven museums packed into one leafy headland — but its history contains one of Norway's darkest chapters sitting quietly behind the beautiful facades.

Villa Grande, a mansion on the peninsula originally built by Norsk Hydro founder Sam Eyde, was confiscated by Vidkun Quisling on December 18, 1941 as his personal residence. He lived there with his wife Maria until his arrest on May 9, 1945. A bunker built for Quisling beneath the mansion was discovered and opened to the public in 2014. After the war, the villa served as headquarters for General Andrew Thorne, supreme commander of Allied forces in Norway. Since 2006, it has housed the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies — the government established it at the request of Norway's Jewish community as part of restitution for wartime property confiscation. On the western shore, a Holocaust memorial unveiled by King Harald V in 2007 faces the water.

But Bygdøy is also beaches, forests, and the Royal Estate — which is, improbably, Oslo's largest producer of organic milk. Huk Beach at the southern tip includes both a regular beach and a nudist beach at Paradisbukta. The summer ferry from City Hall takes ten minutes and is one of the best short boat rides in Scandinavia.

Seven museums, a royal farm, a collaborator's mansion turned Holocaust center, and a nudist beach. Bygdøy contains more contradictions per square kilometer than anywhere else in Oslo, and that's precisely why it's worth a full day.