Reykjavík travel guide

Top 10 sights in Reykjavík

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Steinninn · CC BY 4.0

   Hallgrímskirkja

   A church begun in 1945 and finished in 1986, seventy-four metres high, whose front steps up in concrete columns meant to read as basalt — the hexagonal rock that Iceland is made of. A lift goes up the tower, and the statue in front is Leif Eriksson, given by the United States in 1930.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© APK · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Icelandic Phallological Museum

   A museum holding some two hundred and eighty penises and penile parts from almost every mammal in Iceland, from mouse to sperm whale, assembled by a schoolteacher who began collecting them as a joke in 1974. A human specimen was finally added in 2011, by donation.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© Helmut Seger · CC BY-SA 4.0

   National Museum of Iceland

   The national museum, founded in 1863 to bring Icelandic material back from Danish collections. Its objects include the carved church door from Valþjófsstaður of about 1200 and the small bronze figure from Eyjafjörður that may be either Thor or Christ.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© McKay Savage from London, UK · CC BY 2.0

   Imagine Peace Tower

   Yoko Ono's memorial to John Lennon on the island of Viðey, a stone wishing well from which a column of light rises into the sky. It is lit from his birthday on 9 October to the anniversary of his death on 8 December, and the well holds wishes sent in from around the world.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Landakotskirkja

   Catholic cathedral in Reykjavík, completed in 1929 and for a time the largest church in Iceland. Its architect used concrete cast in Gothic forms.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© APK · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Reykjavík Cathedral

   A small Lutheran cathedral of 1796 beside the parliament, and the mother church of the Church of Iceland. Every session of parliament since 1845 has begun with a service in it, and its font was carved by Bertel Thorvaldsen, who was half Icelandic.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7

   Reykjavik Art Museum

   The largest art institution in Iceland, founded in 1973 and split across three buildings — a harbour warehouse for contemporary work, a pavilion for Kjarval's landscapes, and the studio-home of the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson. One ticket covers all three.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© No machine-readable author provided. Akigka assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY-SA 3.0

   National Gallery of Iceland

   The national gallery, holding the core of Icelandic art — Þórarinn Þorláksson, who first painted the country as landscape rather than backdrop, and Kjarval, whose lava fields are how Icelanders see their own ground.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9

   Reykjavík Botanic Garden

   A botanic garden opened in 1961 for the city's hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary, growing over five thousand species that can survive here — which is the point of it, in a country with almost no native trees. Greylag geese have taken it over.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Reykholt · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Kópavogskirkja

    A church of 1963 on the hill at Kársnes, a white parabolic shell rising from a rock outcrop, and the best modern church in Iceland. It looks over Kópavogur and across to Reykjavík.

    TiqetsKlook

Popular tickets & tours in Reykjavík

Live products and prices are provided directly by Klook.

Trending now

Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fríkirkjan í Reykjavík

   A Lutheran church on the town pond, independent of the state church, whose congregation formed in 1899 in a dispute over the appointment of ministers. Its choir and organ concerts are a fixture of Reykjavík's musical life.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© Girdi · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Reykjavík Mosque

   A mosque and community space in the Ármúli district, opened in 2002 after the Muslim Association of Iceland applied to the city in 2000. Iceland's Muslim population is small and largely made up of recent immigrants and converts.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© APK · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Austurvöllur

   The square in front of the parliament, with the statue of Jón Sigurðsson, who led the independence movement, facing the building. In the winter of 2009 crowds banged pots and pans on this grass until the government fell, which Icelanders call the kitchenware revolution.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© Steinninn · CC BY 4.0

   Árbæjarsafn

   An open-air museum of Reykjavík buildings moved here and re-erected — turf farmhouses, a timber church, a corrugated-iron town house — staffed in period dress. It shows what a city of ten thousand people looked like a century ago.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5

   Öskjuhlíð

   A hill of sixty-one metres in the middle of Reykjavík in Iceland, wooded and designated as an outdoor recreation area.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© Photographer: Mosbatho · CC BY 4.0

   Reykjavik Maritime Museum

   A maritime museum by the old harbour, opened in 2005, covering fishing, trade and the cod wars. The coastguard vessel Óðinn is moored alongside — she served in all three confrontations with the Royal Navy over fishing limits and can be boarded.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Zairon · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Hlíðar

   A residential district of Reykjavík covering six neighbourhoods on the slopes east of the centre, laid out largely in the 1930s to 50s in the low concrete houses that most of the city is built from.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Gunnitune · CC BY-SA 3.0

   The Living Art Museum

   An artist-run museum founded in 1978, when a group of Icelandic artists set up their own institution because the state ones would not show experimental work. Dieter Roth gave it a founding collection, and it is still run by its members.

   TiqetsKlook