The story
This is Norway's oldest university, founded in 1811, and most of its buildings are exactly what you would expect. One room is not. The Aula, the university's grand ceremonial hall, is lined with enormous murals by Edvard Munch, painted between 1911 and 1916 and among the largest works he ever made.
Munch won the commission after a public fight over whether his art was fit for such a solemn space. Having spent years painting anxiety and illness, he turned here toward light. The central wall is filled by The Sun, a blazing disc rising over a rocky Norwegian coast in rays of hard color, flanked by History, an old man teaching a boy under a great tree, and Alma Mater, a mother nursing a child in a green landscape.
The hall is used for ceremonies and concerts, and until 1989 the Nobel Peace Prize was handed out here beneath Munch's sun.
