Tjuvholmen & Astrup Fearnley Museum

The name means "Thief Island," and that's not a cute marketing story. In the eighteenth century, this islet was a penal colony and public execution site specifically designated for thieves. Criminals were killed here in front of crowds. Before that, it was a haven for smugglers and pirates. The irony that it's now one of Oslo's most exclusive addresses — where the luxury hotel is literally called "The Thief" — is not lost on anyone.

The architectural star is Renzo Piano's Astrup Fearnley Museum, which opened in September 2012 at a cost of ninety million euros. Piano — the man behind the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Shard in London — designed three large building volumes shaped like sails, covered by a dramatic curved glass roof meant to evoke ice forming on a fjord. The museum houses one of Northern Europe's most important private collections of contemporary art, with works by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, and Sigmar Polke, among many others.

Tjuvholmen itself was originally a separate island that became a peninsula through post-glacial rebound — the land literally rose out of the sea after the last Ice Age. The neighborhood connects to Aker Brygge at its eastern edge, extending the waterfront promenade further west. At the tip of the peninsula there's a small public beach — one of the few places in central Oslo where you can swim in the fjord.

The transformation from execution ground to art museum and luxury district is Oslo's most extreme example of gentrification, compressed into three centuries. Thieves once died here. Now they probably couldn't afford the rent.