City Sauna Bergen: Guide to the Floating Sauna and Harbour Cruise in Laksevåg
City Sauna Bergen holds a rare 4.9-star rating across 415 reviews. Here's how its floating sauna and sauna-cruise format actually works, what it costs, and why Laksevåg is where it's moored.
Most floating saunas ask you to sit still. City Sauna Bergen doesn’t — alongside its regular drop-in sessions, it runs a sauna mounted on a cruise boat that moves through Bergen’s harbour while you sweat, which is not a format you find at most of the city’s other operators. It’s also, by the numbers, one of the most consistently well-reviewed saunas anywhere in Norway: a 4.9-star average across 415 Google reviews, a result that’s genuinely hard to sustain at that volume.
A floating sauna built around a cruise
City Sauna Bergen is based at Damsgårdsveien 139 in Laksevåg, on Damsgårdssundet, the sheltered channel that separates Laksevåg from Bergen’s city centre. The operator runs two distinct formats from here. The first is a straightforward drop-in floating sauna — pay per person, share the cabin with other guests, and use the fixed opening hours through the week. The second is the sauna cruise: a roughly two-hour private booking in which your group has a boat and an onboard sauna to itself while it travels Bergen’s waterways, with running commentary on the harbour and its history along the way.
On tourism listings you’ll sometimes see the business as City Sauna & Cruise or City Sea Sauna rather than City Sauna Bergen — Visit Bergen, Visit Norway and Fjord Norway all list it under slightly different names, but it’s the same operator, and citysauna.no is the one place to book directly.
Drop-in sessions actually run from a second address a short walk from the main dock: Damsgårdsveien 59, next to the Godt Brød bakery at Fløttmansplassen. That’s a detail worth knowing before you turn up expecting one single door — the cruise departs from Damsgårdsveien 139, drop-in guests should head to Damsgårdsveien 59.
What a session actually looks like
The shape of a visit follows the format you book. For drop-in, it’s the classic floating-sauna rhythm: heat up in the cabin, step out onto the deck, and go straight into the harbour water, cycling as many times as the session length allows. Swimwear is required for shared sessions.
The cruise adds a layer most Bergen saunas don’t offer. Instead of staying moored, the boat moves — out along Damsgårdssundet and around the harbour, with views back toward Bryggen’s old wharf buildings and the ring of mountains that frame the city. Reviewers consistently mention the crew’s local commentary as part of what makes the format feel different from a standard rental: it’s as much a harbour tour as it is a sauna session, just considerably hotter.
Prices, capacity and how to book
Drop-in sessions start from 150 NOK per person — in line with the budget-to-mid end of Bergen’s sauna market (see our guide to sauna prices in Norway for how that compares nationally). The cruise is priced per group rather than per person, and scales with headcount: roughly 3,600 NOK for a party of three or four, rising in steps to around 6,000 NOK for a full boat of eleven or twelve. That structure makes it noticeably better value the more people you bring, which is why it shows up repeatedly as a pick for birthdays, work outings, and bachelor or bachelorette groups.
Everything is booked online through citysauna.no rather than by phone or walk-in, and both formats are genuinely popular enough to sell out — weekend drop-in slots and summer cruise dates especially. The cruise is also weather-dependent, particularly in winter, and the operator may need to postpone with a few days’ notice if conditions turn. Building in some flexibility around your dates, especially outside the summer months, is worth it.
An almost perfect rating — and why it matters
A 4.9-star average is unusual on its own; sustaining it across 415 separate reviews is the harder achievement. At that volume, a handful of bad days would normally drag the average down — a broken shower, a cancelled slot, an off night with the crew. That City Sauna Bergen has held close to a perfect score suggests an operation that’s ironed out the rough edges most sauna businesses eventually hit.
It’s worth putting that number next to the city’s other well-regarded operators for context, without treating this as a full comparison. Heit Bergen, the city’s best-known wood-fired floating sauna chain, sits at 4.8 stars from 286 reviews — excellent, but City Sauna Bergen edges it on both counts. Laugaren, the volunteer-run community sauna at Georgernes Verft and a past winner of Sauna of the Year, trades polish for atmosphere and a lower drop-in price, and draws a different crowd as a result. None of these are better or worse across the board — they’re simply different bets on what a Bergen sauna visit should feel like, and City Sauna Bergen’s bet is reliability at scale.
Laksevåg: Bergen’s quieter sauna waterfront
Laksevåg doesn’t get the same tourist footfall as Bryggen, Nordnes or Marineholmen, even though it’s only a short trip across the water from the city centre. City Sauna Bergen isn’t alone here — Heit Bergen Laksevåg operates from Damsgårdsveien 225, a few hundred metres further along the same Damsgårdssundet waterfront — which has quietly turned this stretch into one of Bergen’s more active sauna corners, just without the queues and photo-taking crowds you’ll find around the central harbour saunas.
For a fuller picture of what else sits along Bergen’s waterfront, our guide to the best saunas near Bergen rounds up the wider scene, from central harbour options to spots further out along the fjord.
Planning your visit
If you’re choosing between drop-in and the cruise, let group size and mood decide it. A solo visit or a couple squeezed into someone else’s slot works well as drop-in at 150 NOK a head. A group of six, eight, or twelve gets meaningfully more out of booking the cruise outright — you get the boat, the sauna, and the harbour tour, with the per-person cost dropping the larger the group gets.
Whichever format you choose, book ahead through citysauna.no, bring swimwear and a towel, and check the weather forecast if you’ve booked the cruise in the colder months. For how private sauna hire works more broadly across Norway — deposits, cancellation policies, what’s typically included — our guide to private sauna booking in Norway is a useful next stop, and our comparison of Norway’s sauna chains is worth reading if you’re weighing City Sauna Bergen against operators in other cities.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is City Sauna Bergen?
City Sauna Bergen is a floating sauna based in Laksevåg, at Damsgårdsveien 139, that also runs sauna cruises around Bergen's harbour. It's sometimes listed on tourism sites as City Sauna & Cruise or City Sea Sauna — all the same operator, reachable through citysauna.no. It holds a 4.9-star Google rating from 415 reviews, one of the highest of any sauna in Norway.
Where exactly is City Sauna Bergen located?
The main address is Damsgårdsveien 139, 5160 Laksevåg — on Damsgårdssundet, the narrow stretch of water on Bergen's western side. Drop-in sauna sessions run from a separate quay nearby at Damsgårdsveien 59, next to Godt Brød at Fløttmansplassen, while the sauna-cruise boat departs from the Damsgårdsveien 139 address.
How much does City Sauna Bergen cost?
Drop-in sessions start from 150 NOK per person. Private sauna cruises are priced by group size rather than per head, starting at around 3,600 NOK for three to four people and scaling up toward 6,000 NOK or more for a full boat of eleven or twelve. Always confirm current pricing on citysauna.no before booking.
What's the difference between the drop-in sauna and the sauna cruise?
Drop-in is a shared, fixed-price session in the floating sauna cabin at set opening hours during the week. The sauna cruise is a private, roughly two-hour booking where your group has the boat and sauna to yourselves while it moves around Bergen's waterways — a different experience built for birthdays, work outings and groups who want the whole vessel rather than a shared slot.
Do I need to book City Sauna Bergen in advance?
Yes. Bookings are made online through citysauna.no, and popular slots — especially weekend drop-in hours and cruise dates in summer — fill up days or weeks ahead. The cruise is also weather-dependent, particularly in winter, so operators may need to postpone with a few days' notice.
Is City Sauna Bergen good for groups and private events?
Yes — it's one of the more flexible operators in the city for this. The tiered cruise pricing scales cleanly from small groups of three or four up to a full boat of around twelve, which makes it a popular choice for birthdays, bachelor and bachelorette parties, and small corporate outings looking for something more memorable than a meeting room.
