Sommerro Hotel Oslo

A restored 1930s power station with original Art Deco tilework, a rooftop pool overlooking the city, and seven restaurants under one roof. There's nothing else in Oslo like this. If you want a hotel that makes you cancel your afternoon plans because you'd rather stay in, this is it.

The lobby hits you like a movie set. A converted 1930s electrical company headquarters in Frogner, dripping with custom furniture, rich woods, and period details that someone spent serious money restoring. This is not a quiet hotel. Seven restaurants, multiple bars, a cinema, live jazz. Locals pack the ground-floor brasserie on weekends. The energy is infectious if you're into it, exhausting if you're not.

The rooftop pool is heated to 28°C year-round with views over the city and fjord. Sounds great. The catch is it's reserved for suite guests and specific wellness packages. Book a standard room and you're limited to the basement pool, a beautifully restored historic space but not the one in the marketing photos. This frustrates people, and rightly so.

Entry-level rooms, the Loft and Twin Alcove categories, run about 19 to 23 square metres. Fine for one person. Two people with suitcases will be climbing over each other. Rooms facing the internal atrium pick up restaurant and bar noise, especially Friday and Saturday nights when music runs late. Ask for a higher floor facing Sommerrogata if sleep matters to you.

The Frogner neighbourhood is leafy, upscale, full of embassies and boutiques. A 10 to 15 minute walk to the Royal Palace and the city centre. The breakfast buffet in the grand hall is excellent, but go before 9 AM or you'll be fighting for a table under the murals. There's also a free in-house cinema showing classic films, worth asking the concierge about.


The rooftop pool isn't included with standard rooms. Book a suite or wellness package if that's why you're coming, or you'll be disappointed.


Star rating
5

Hotel category
Luxury

Neighbourhood vibe


Frogner is Oslo's poshest residential area. Quiet, tree-lined streets, embassies, high-end boutiques. A 10 to 15 minute walk to the city centre.

What to do nearby


2.3km
See three internationally important Viking Age burial ships, including the exceptionally complete Oseberg, and the associated grave goods that provide direct evidence of 9th-century shipbuilding and elite burial practice.
2.3km
Inner-Oslo island where substantial 12th-century Cistercian monastery ruins sit alongside visible quarry geology and 19th-century military remains, all reachable by a short ferry from the city.
2.8km
Norway's oldest botanical garden (established 1814) with free admission to 6.5 hectares of geographically organized plant collections, a Victorian Palm House from 1868, and modern climate-controlled greenhouses.

Other hotels nearby


1.7km
Three included meals per day make this one of the best-value hotels in one of Europe's most expensive cities.
1.7km Insider pick
Built in the former headquarters of the Norwegian America Line, the company that shipped thousands of emigrants to the US in the early 1900s. More character than anything else in this part of Oslo. The cocktail bar sits in the old booking hall where passengers once collected their tickets, all dark wood and low lighting. Two-minute walk from the airport train platform.
1.7km
Oslo's biggest hotel. New and fresh. Rooftop bar with fjord views, three minutes from the airport train. Rooms are unremarkable chain-hotel fare. But the rooftop alone makes it a sharper pick than the faceless business hotels nearby, and the location is hard to fault for convenience.