Outdoor concerts are frequently held at the fortress while the local churches, pubs, and student union are regular venues for indoor concerts. Musicians recorded by the Hitsville and Athletic Sound studios in the Halden region include Motorpsycho, Madrugada, Morten Harket, and Kurt Nilsen. The city's intimate theatre hosts frequent plays by national and local theatre groups, and occasionally serves as a concert hall.
Halden festivals include a food and wooden boat festival (Halden Day) in July, a croquet festival (August), the Bom-Kr�sj-Bang cultural festival (April), and the Down on the Farm country/roots festival. The famous pub "Siste Reis" neighbouring the train station has been voted among the ten best pubs in Europe!
Artists born in Halden that are represented in the Norwegian National Gallery in Oslo include Thomas Fearnley (1802�1842) and Jacob Mathias Calmeyer (1802�1883). Fearnley is locally exhibited at the manor house R�d Herreg�rd. Other significant artists that lived in Halden, but were not born there, include Johannes Fintoe (1786�1870) and Heinrich August Grosch (1763�1843). Grosch's son, Christian Heinrich Grosch (1801�1865), who moved with his parents to Halden at the age of ten, became an influential architect, whose works include seventy-eight churches (including Immanuels Kirke in Halden), the Bank of Norway, the Oslo Stock Exchange, and the original university buildings in Oslo
