The Government Quarter sits just 300 metres northeast of Stortinget along Akersgata. Plans for a governmental district here go back to 1885, but it took until the 1950s before the old Empirekvartalet, a neighbourhood of neoclassical buildings, was demolished to make room. That demolition was hugely controversial at the time, and many still consider it one of Oslo's worst acts of urban destruction.
What replaced it was architect Erling Viksjø's modernist vision: Høyblokka, the 17-storey high-rise completed in 1958, and Y-blokka, the Y-shaped lower building finished in 1969. Viksjø developed a special material called naturbetong, concrete embedded with natural stones that could be sandblasted to reveal their texture. Both buildings featured monumental murals by Pablo Picasso, executed by Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar: "The Fishermen" and "The Seagull" decorated Y-blokka's facade and lobby.
On 22 July 2011, a car bomb exploded against Høyblokka at 15:25, killing eight people and injuring many more. The blast created a crater two storeys deep, shattered windows across several blocks, and left parts of the quarter looking like a war zone. The attack was the first act of Norway's worst peacetime terror; the perpetrator went on to murder 69 people at Utøya the same afternoon.
What followed became its own scandal. The government decided to demolish Y-blokka despite international protests. MoMA curators wrote to the Prime Minister, tens of thousands signed petitions, and preservationists argued the Picasso murals were inseparable from the building. The murals were stripped from the walls in 2020 and the building demolished, with promises to reinstall them in the new complex. Høyblokka itself will be preserved and restored.
Then came the costs. The reconstruction was initially estimated at 3 to 6 billion kroner. By 2025, the price tag had ballooned to 53.5 billion kroner, an increase of over 17 billion from already revised estimates. Ring 1 road reconstruction, new security requirements from a 2018 law, doubled energy solution costs, and general construction inflation all contributed. The project won the Sløseriprisen (Waste Award) in 2025, with 56 percent of voters calling it the year's biggest public spending disaster. The full complex is not expected to be finished until 2030, nineteen years after the attack. Today the area is a massive construction site, but the story of what stood here, what happened, and what went wrong afterwards, is pure Oslo.
What replaced it was architect Erling Viksjø's modernist vision: Høyblokka, the 17-storey high-rise completed in 1958, and Y-blokka, the Y-shaped lower building finished in 1969. Viksjø developed a special material called naturbetong, concrete embedded with natural stones that could be sandblasted to reveal their texture. Both buildings featured monumental murals by Pablo Picasso, executed by Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar: "The Fishermen" and "The Seagull" decorated Y-blokka's facade and lobby.
On 22 July 2011, a car bomb exploded against Høyblokka at 15:25, killing eight people and injuring many more. The blast created a crater two storeys deep, shattered windows across several blocks, and left parts of the quarter looking like a war zone. The attack was the first act of Norway's worst peacetime terror; the perpetrator went on to murder 69 people at Utøya the same afternoon.
What followed became its own scandal. The government decided to demolish Y-blokka despite international protests. MoMA curators wrote to the Prime Minister, tens of thousands signed petitions, and preservationists argued the Picasso murals were inseparable from the building. The murals were stripped from the walls in 2020 and the building demolished, with promises to reinstall them in the new complex. Høyblokka itself will be preserved and restored.
Then came the costs. The reconstruction was initially estimated at 3 to 6 billion kroner. By 2025, the price tag had ballooned to 53.5 billion kroner, an increase of over 17 billion from already revised estimates. Ring 1 road reconstruction, new security requirements from a 2018 law, doubled energy solution costs, and general construction inflation all contributed. The project won the Sløseriprisen (Waste Award) in 2025, with 56 percent of voters calling it the year's biggest public spending disaster. The full complex is not expected to be finished until 2030, nineteen years after the attack. Today the area is a massive construction site, but the story of what stood here, what happened, and what went wrong afterwards, is pure Oslo.