Torgallmenningen is Bergen's main square, and it owes its existence to fire. When flames tore through the city centre in 1916, one of more than thirty major blazes in Bergen's history, the square was rebuilt from scratch. What emerged is a piece of Scandinavian monumental neo-classicism, completed in the 1920s and still the city's social heart.

The name tells its own story. "Torg" means market; "allmenningen" dates to 1276, when King Magnus Lagabøte decreed that Bergen's communal squares must be at least 4.4 metres wide, wide enough, the thinking went, to stop a fire spreading. Bergen's history suggests it worked poorly.

At the far end stands the Seafarers' Monument, twelve statues and eight reliefs tracing Norwegian maritime life from the Vikings onward. VoiceMap's tours connect the square to Ole Bull, Henrik Ibsen and a city that has rebuilt itself, repeatedly, from ash.