Our walk up Storhaugen had been to mostly kill time in Ålesund before the museum we wanted to first visit opened, but let’s also pretend it had been for the fresh air and gentle fitness activity too. Though that walk hadn’t been too strenuous for us, even given our general levels of natural lethargy and various injuries, the walk back down into town was definitely easier and even the persistent fine mist of a drizzle that formed the day’s accompanying weather had eased off a little.
Ålesund is a place to come for early twentieth century architecture and we admired much of it on the walk down to the city centre. Art Nouveau, but not quite Art Nouveau.
If you’ve read the previous post in this series covering our 2025 cruise aboard Ambassador Ambience then you’ll have rolled your eyes as I droned on about the geography of Ålesund and how we’d docked on one of its islands, Nørvøya, then crossed over the short bridge to the smallest of its islands, Aspøya, when heading up the hill. We would be staying on Aspøya while visiting the museum but since I took a photo of the waterway that separates the two islands at this point, below you can see just how close the islands really are and what’s involved in crossing from one to the other.
The museum we were interested in was Jugendstilsenteret, or the Jugendstil Centre. It’s a building that’s hard to miss if you’re visiting, and it was the first listed building relating to the Jugendstil movement in the city, earning this accolade in 1984. The building itself – a pharmacy originally – was built between 1905 and 1907, like most of the rest of the city, and if you want to delve into the reasons for that, as well as what separates Jugendstil from the closely-related Art Nouveau movement, then I covered it more fully in our first visit to Ålesund a few years earlier (see: Ålesund And Some Architectural History), but the very abbreviated version is: big fire followed by rebuilding assistance from Kaiser Wilhelm.
The Jugendstil Centre is not a large museum but it has some lovely pieces on display in its rooms. A few photos here will whet your appetite if this is the sort of place you think you might be interested in visiting while in Ålesund. Given the relatively small size of the city then if you’re not heading off on an excursion – assuming you’ve arrived on a cruise ship – then it’s probably the main attraction for people who like to learn a little when they travel. Other people like to shop or drink or walk, and if that’s you then that’s fine too, but since you’ve found this page (somehow, given the terrible state of searching online these days) then it would seem you’re carrying a keen mind in your head, and the architectural and art centre is worth some of your time and money in my opinion. I have great opinions.
There was plenty of silverware and brooches on show, the former being of interest to my father-in-law and the latter being of interest to my mother-in-law (with one brooch we saw looking almost identical to something she owns), so my wife took lots of pictures to send to them in an attempt to encourage them to visit here at some future point. They’ve actually since booked a cruise to this part of the world and will be stopping in Ålesund so they’re bound to pop into the museum now. This officially makes us influencers.
I adored the intricate detailing on the following two pieces we saw in the Jugendstil Centre, and the teapot particularly. Small, yes, but I bet it pours a wonderful cup of tea.
The Jugendstil Centre includes a small shop and a café and we spent money in both of them. The café was a bit weird, appearing to work on the honour system where you sorted yourself out then popped back to the entrance to tell the people what drink you’d made and what cookie you’d eaten.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we do a bit more wandering around, exploring more of the streets of Ålesund until such time as the brewery near the port opens.