Stavanger is the fourth largest city in Norway with a population of 144.515 in 2021.
The city counts its official founding year as 1125, the year the Stavanger Cathedral was completed. Stavanger’s core is to a large degree 18th- and 19th-century wooden houses that are protected and considered part of the city’s cultural heritage. This has caused the town centre and inner city to retain a small-town character with an unusually high ratio of detached houses, and has contributed significantly to spreading the city’s population growth to outlying parts of the city.

The city’s rapid population growth in the late 20th century was primarily a result of Norway’s booming offshore oil industry.
Today the oil industry is a key industry in the Stavanger region and the city is widely referred to as the Oil Capital of Norway.
Multiple educational institutions for higher education are located in Stavanger. The largest of these is the University of Stavanger.

Stavanger is served by international airport Stavanger Airport, Sola, which offers flights to cities in most major European countries, as well as a limited number of intercontinental charter flights. The airport was named most punctual European regional airport by flightstats.com in 2010.