Reykjavík Essential Sights

The National Museum of Iceland sits at forty-one Suðurgata Street, easily identified by its functional, modernist architecture designed by Sigurður Guðmundsson. Established on February twenty-fourth, eighteen sixty-three, the museum began…

The Reykjavík Maritime Museum sits directly on the harbor in a concrete building that functioned as a fish freezing plant from nineteen forty-seven until nineteen ninety-one. You can identify the site by the large coast guard vessel, the…

Reykjavík City Hall occupies the northern shore of Tjörnin pond, with a modern concrete and glass exterior that appears to float above the water. Completed in nineteen ninety-two, the building houses the municipal headquarters for the…

Tjörnin is a shallow, freshwater pond in the center of Reykjavík that stretches between rows of colorful houses and major civic buildings like the City Hall. With an average depth of less than two feet, it originated as a tidal lagoon…

Alþingishúsið, the Icelandic parliament house, is defined by its exterior walls of dark, hewn dolerite, a volcanic stone that gives the nineteenth-century building a heavy, rugged appearance. It stands at the edge of Austurvöllur square in…

Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre stands along the waterfront with a shimmering facade of twelve-sided glass modules. These panels, designed by artist Olafur Eliasson in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects, mimic the…

The Sun Voyager is a stainless steel sculpture that gleams against the North Atlantic waterfront, its skeletal frame forming an abstract vessel that catches the shifting light of the sea and sky. While many visitors mistake it for a Viking…

Laugavegur is recognizable by its long, gently sloping path lined with a mix of low-rise, colorful buildings. This street acts as the main commercial artery of Reykjavík, stretching about two kilometers through the historic heart of the…

Hallgrímskirkja is defined by its soaring concrete facade, where tiers of vertical stone columns fan outward to mirror the natural basalt lava flows found at Iceland's Svartifoss waterfall. Standing seventy-four and a half meters tall,…