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Reykjavík’s centre is small enough to walk in a day, and roughly half the 24 things below cost nothing at all. Hallgrímskirkja, Harpa, the Sun Voyager, Tjörnin, the Leif Eriksson statue, Höfði House, Kolaportið and the Handknitting Association are all free to see or enter; the museums, Perlan and FlyOver Iceland are the ones you pay for. Two days covers the city comfortably, three if you want the museums properly.
Reykjavík sits on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay in the southwest of Iceland, on the site of a farmstead the Norse chieftain Ingólfur Arnarson established around 870. It holds about 140,000 people, and the wider capital region about 253,000, which is nearly two-thirds of everybody in Iceland. Icelandic is the language, English is spoken everywhere, and the clock runs on GMT all year with no daylight saving.
Two things to sort before you arrive. Iceland uses the króna (ISK), not the euro, and Reykjavík’s attraction prices move every year, so this page says what is free and what is ticketed rather than quoting figures that will be wrong by the time you read them. And if you intend to enter several museums, look at the Reykjavík City Card on the city’s own tourist site first: it bundles the municipal museums, the city’s swimming pools and Strætó buses, and it settles the arithmetic in one purchase.
1. Hallgrímskirkja
Hallgrímskirkja is Reykjavík’s tallest church and the building you use to navigate by, standing 74.5 m (244 ft) at Hallgrímstorg 1 on the hill above the centre. The expressionist design by the state architect Guðjón Samúelsson echoes basalt columns, and the church is named after Hallgrímur Pétursson, the 17th-century clergyman who wrote the Passion Hymns. Construction ran from 1945 to 1986: the crypt was consecrated in 1948, the steeple and wings finished in 1974 and the nave in 1986.
Entry to the church is free; the tower is ticketed, and a lift takes you most of the way up to a 360-degree view over the coloured roofs to the bay and Mount Esja. It is an active parish church, so services and concerts close it to visitors at times. Check the church’s own timetable for the day you want to go, and note the organ recitals, which are the reason to come back in the evening.
2. Sun Voyager Sculpture
The Sun Voyager, Sólfar, is a stainless steel skeleton of a ship on the seafront path along Sæbraut, and it is free, open and lit by whatever the sky is doing. Jón Gunnar Árnason designed it as an ode to the sun rather than as a Viking longship, which is what almost everyone assumes, and it was unveiled in 1990, the year after his death.
It is a ten-minute walk east along the shore from Harpa, so pair the two. Come at sunset, when the steel takes the colour off the water and Mount Esja stands behind it across Faxaflói Bay. In summer that means very late; in winter it means mid-afternoon.
3. Harpa Concert Hall
Harpa is Reykjavík’s concert hall and its most photographed modern building, at Austurbakki 2 on the old harbour, and the lobby is free to walk into. The glass façade of angled cells was designed by Henning Larsen Architects with the artist Ólafur Elíasson, and it opened in 2011 after construction stalled in the financial crisis, which is part of why Icelanders are attached to it.
Inside are four halls, Eldborg, Silfurberg, Norðurljós and Kaldalón, used by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and for festivals and conferences. Go in even without a ticket: the lobby stairs and the harbour views are the point, there are free events in it, and there are shops and restaurants on the ground floor. Guided architecture tours run if you want the building explained.
4. Perlan Museum
Perlan is a museum built on top of the city’s hot water tanks on Öskjuhlíð hill, and it is the indoor answer to bad weather. The glass dome holds the Wonders of Iceland exhibition, whose headline pieces are a man-made ice cave you walk through, a planetarium show on the northern lights, and a full-height replica of the Látrabjarg bird cliff. There are volcano and earthquake displays, a marine augmented-reality area, a café and restaurant, and a free observation deck on top.
It is about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) southeast of downtown, ten minutes by car or taxi, and a Strætó bus stops at the foot of the hill. Entry to the exhibition is ticketed and the observation deck is free, which is worth knowing if all you want is the view. This is the strongest wet-afternoon option in the city and it works for all ages.
5. Whales of Iceland
Whales of Iceland is the largest whale museum in Europe, at Fiskislóð 23-25 in the Grandi harbour district, and its whole idea is scale: 23 life-size models of the species found in Icelandic waters, hung from the ceiling across two floors. Standing under a blue whale does something no photograph manages.
The models carry the markings of individual animals recorded off Iceland, and there are listening stations for the vocalisations, audio guides in a long list of languages, daily guided tours, a theatre, a café and a shop. It is roughly 1.5 km (0.9 mi) from the centre, walkable in twenty minutes along the harbour, and there is free parking outside. Do this before a whale-watching trip, not after.
6. Aurora Reykjavik
Aurora Reykjavik is a small northern lights centre in the Grandi district, and its real value is for people who are not going to see the real thing. The exhibition explains what causes the aurora, shows time-lapse footage on a wide screen, and has an aurora photo booth plus, more usefully, a station that teaches you the camera settings for shooting them.
It is ticketed, it takes under an hour, and it sits within a few minutes’ walk of Whales of Iceland and FlyOver Iceland, so the three make one Grandi afternoon. If you are visiting between May and August, when the sky never gets dark enough for the aurora, this is the closest you will get.
7. Árbæjarsafn Open Air Museum
Árbæjarsafn is Reykjavík’s open-air museum, a village of more than 20 historic buildings moved here and reassembled around an old farm. Árbæjarsafn is part of Reykjavík City Museum, and what it shows is the century in which Iceland went from turf farms to a modern city: farmhouses, a turf church, a smithy, a shop and town houses, furnished as they were and staffed in costume in summer.
It is out in the Elliðaárdalur valley rather than downtown, reachable by bus, and its opening hours are much reduced outside summer, so check before you make the trip. It is ticketed, and covered by the City Card.
8. Reykjavik Art Museum
Reykjavík Art Museum is Iceland’s largest visual art institution and it is three separate buildings on one ticket, which is the fact that makes it good value. The three are Hafnarhús, a converted harbour warehouse downtown showing contemporary work; Kjarvalsstaðir, in a park, built around the landscapes of Jóhannes S. Kjarval; and Ásmundarsafn, the domed studio-house of the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson.
One admission covers all three, so if you like the first you can walk to the next. Hafnarhús is the one to start with if you only do one.
9. National Gallery of Iceland
The National Gallery of Iceland is the country’s main art collection, on Fríkirkjuvegur beside Tjörnin pond, and it traces Icelandic painting and sculpture from the 19th century to now. The National Gallery is where you see how a country with no painting tradition acquired one in two generations, and the landscape work is the part that stays with people.
It is ticketed, it is small enough for an hour, and it sits two minutes from the pond and City Hall, so it slots neatly into a downtown walk. There is a café and a research library.
10. Settlement Exhibition
The Settlement Exhibition on Aðalstræti is built around the real thing: the excavated remains of a 10th-century Viking longhouse, left in place under a glass floor in the basement where they were found. Layers on the site include a turf wall dated by a volcanic ash layer to 871, give or take two years, which is the oldest evidence of building in Reykjavík.
Around the ruin are the objects that came out of the ground, bone combs, iron tools, animal bone, with multimedia reconstructions of what the house and its people looked like. It is ticketed, part of Reykjavík City Museum, small, and the most direct answer to “how old is this city” in the centre of town.
11. Saga Museum
The Saga Museum recreates scenes from the Icelandic sagas and the settlement period with life-size silicone figures, in the Grandi harbour district. The Saga Museum is closer to a waxwork walk-through than to a museum of objects, and the figures are unsettlingly good: they were modelled on living Icelanders, and the audio guide walks you scene by scene through the killings, court cases and voyages the sagas actually record.
It is ticketed, takes under an hour, and there is a costume area at the end where you can try on mail and hold a sword, which children like more than they expect to.
12. Laugardalur Park
Laugardalur is Reykjavík’s big green valley east of the centre, and it is where the city goes rather than where visitors go. Laugardalur holds Laugardalslaug, the largest swimming pool in the country, with outdoor lanes, hot tubs and a steam room, and a swim there for the price of a local ticket is the cheapest genuinely Icelandic thing you can do in the city.
Around it are the botanical garden, the family park and zoo at Húsdýragarðurinn, a sports complex and the national stadium. It is about 2 km (1.2 mi) from downtown and served by buses. Remember the rule: you shower naked before you get in the water, and the diagrams on the wall are not decorative.
13. Tjörnin Pond
Tjörnin is the pond in the middle of Reykjavík, with City Hall on one bank and the National Gallery on the other, and walking round it takes about twenty minutes. Tjörnin is the city’s bird pond, with more than forty species recorded on it, and part of it is kept ice-free in winter by geothermal water, which concentrates the birds into that patch.
It is free. Two things to know: do not feed bread to the ducks, which the city asks you not to and which harms them, and the small park at the southern end, Hljómskálagarður, holds a set of sculptures worth the detour.
14. Viðey Island
Viðey is a flat, uninhabited island in Faxaflói Bay, reached by a short ferry from Skarfabakki, and it is the easiest escape from the city there is. Viðey holds a 1774 church and one of Iceland’s oldest stone houses, along with two major artworks: Richard Serra’s Milestones, nine pairs of basalt columns set across the island, and Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Tower.
The whole island is walkable in a couple of hours on level paths. The ferry runs on a reduced schedule outside summer, so check the timetable before you go out to the terminal, because there is nothing at Skarfabakki if you miss it.
15. Imagine Peace Tower
The Imagine Peace Tower is Yoko Ono’s memorial to John Lennon on Viðey, and it is not a tower: it is a wishing well of stone that projects a column of light into the sky from 15 searchlights. The words “imagine peace” are carved into it in 24 languages, and buried around it are wishes sent in by the public.
It is lit only on certain dates, which is the thing to get right. The main period runs from 9 October, Lennon’s birthday, to 8 December, the anniversary of his death, and it is also lit around the winter solstice and New Year and on a few other occasions. Confirm the dates before you plan an evening ferry, and dress for standing still on an exposed island in October.
16. Leif Eriksson Statue
The Leif Eriksson statue stands on the hilltop in front of Hallgrímskirkja, and it was a gift from the United States in 1930 to mark the thousandth anniversary of the Alþingi. Alexander Stirling Calder sculpted it, and the figure on its granite prow commemorates the voyage that took Leif from Iceland to North America around the year 1000, roughly five centuries before Columbus.
It is free, it is outdoors, and it is on the way to the church, so nobody needs to plan a trip to it. The view down Skólavörðustígur from the base is one of the most photographed in the city.
17. FlyOver Iceland
FlyOver Iceland is a flight simulator ride at Fiskislóð 43 in the Grandi district, and it is the way to see the interior of the country without driving it. You hang in a seat with your feet dangling in front of a spherical screen while a film takes you over glaciers, down waterfalls, across the highlands and through the northern lights, with wind, mist and motion added.
Two pre-shows lead into it. The ride itself is about eight minutes, and it is the one attraction in Reykjavík that consistently impresses people who thought they would find it naff. It is ticketed, and advance online booking is cheaper than buying at the door. It sits a short walk from Whales of Iceland and Aurora Reykjavik.
18. Icelandic Opera House
Opera in Reykjavík changed hands in 2025, and this is the section older guides get wrong. Íslenska óperan, the Icelandic Opera founded in 1980, lost its state funding and ceased operations in 2024. In its place the Icelandic Parliament created the Icelandic National Opera, Þjóðaróperan, by law in 2025, as a division of the National Theatre of Iceland, with the tenor Finnur Bjarnason as its first director and a permanent company of soloists and chorus.
The new company performs at Harpa, at Austurbakki 2, from 2026. So the venue is the same building as item 3 on this list and the organisation is new. Ticket prices vary by production, and the way to check what is on is Harpa’s own calendar rather than any older opera company site.
19. The Pearl Rotating Restaurant
The Pearl is the revolving restaurant under Perlan’s glass dome on Öskjuhlíð hill, sitting on top of six hot water tanks, and a full rotation takes about two hours, which is roughly the length of a dinner. The kitchen works from seasonal Icelandic ingredients and the menu changes through the year, from summer à la carte to autumn game and traditional Christmas dishes, so the card in December is a different one from the card in July.
Booking is required for the restaurant. Getting into the building, the observation deck, the café and the shop costs nothing, so you can have the view without the dinner, which is the option most people should take. It is 1.5 km (0.9 mi) from the centre with free parking, or a half-hour walk up through the wooded hill.
20. Hafnarfjörður town
Hafnarfjörður is a town of about 26,000 people 10 km (6.2 mi) south of Reykjavík, and it is the day trip you can do on a city bus. Hafnarfjörður means “harbour fjord”, and it is built into and around a lava field, with coloured timber warehouses along the harbour and rock outcrops between the houses.
What to do there: swim at one of the geothermal pools, eat at the Viking Village restaurant, walk Hellisgerði park and its lava garden, climb Helgafell, the hill above the town, and visit Hafnarborg for exhibitions and concerts or the town museum for its history. Hafnarfjörður is also the place in Iceland most associated with the huldufólk, and guided hidden-people walks run in summer. The Viking Festival in June is the event to time a visit for.
It is a 15-minute drive or a 25-minute ride on the Strætó bus from downtown Reykjavík. The town itself is free; the pools and museums charge.
21. Höfði House
Höfði House is a white timber villa on the waterfront at Borgartún 1, and you cannot go inside it. Höfði was built in 1909 for the French consul, in an Art Nouveau and Nordic Romantic style, and it has hosted Winston Churchill and Marlene Dietrich, but the reason it matters is the 1986 summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held in it, which is generally taken as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
It remains in government use for official functions, so there is no museum, no ticket and no tour. What you can do is walk the shoreline path in front of it, read the interpretive signs outside, and photograph it against the bay. It is 1.1 km (0.7 mi) from Hallgrímskirkja and a ten to fifteen minute walk from most central hotels.
22. Handknitting Association
The Handknitting Association of Iceland, Handprjónasamband Íslands, is a knitters’ cooperative with a shop on Skólavörðustígur, and it is where to buy a real lopapeysa. The association was founded in November 1977, mainly by women, to sell their own work directly, and every garment in the shop is hand-knitted in Iceland by a member, which is not true of most sweaters sold in Reykjavík.
The shop sells sweaters, hats, mittens, scarves and Icelandic wool yarn, and members knit on site, so you can ask about the patterns and what they mean. Entry is free, it is a couple of minutes below Hallgrímskirkja, and the difference between this and a souvenir shop is that you are paying the person who made the thing.
23. Reykjavik Maritime Museum
The Maritime Museum, formally Víkin, is at Grandagarður 8 in the Old Harbour, opened in 2005, and it is the clearest account of what Iceland actually lived on. The museum covers the fishing industry, the Cod Wars and the sea’s place in Icelandic life across two floors of exhibitions, with an aquarium of local species and touch tanks for children.
The thing to buy is the ship. The coast guard vessel Óðinn is moored alongside and needs a separate ticket, and going aboard her, into the engine room and the bridge, is better than the galleries. Guided tours of Óðinn run at fixed times, so arrive to match one. The museum is part of Reykjavík City Museum and is covered by the City Card.
24. Kolaportið Flea Market
Kolaportið is Iceland’s largest indoor flea market, in a warehouse at Tryggvagata 19 near the Old Harbour, and it opens at weekends only, generally 11am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday plus the odd public holiday. Getting the day wrong is the single most common mistake visitors make with it.
More than a hundred stalls sell second-hand clothes, books, records, DVDs, antiques and military surplus, alongside handmade Icelandic wool from local knitters and a craft section, Krásir, of jewellery, candles and art. At the back is a food section selling fermented shark, dried fish and liquorice, which is the cheapest and least ceremonious way to try hákarl in Iceland. Entry is free and it is a ten-minute walk from anywhere downtown.
Practical questions
How many days do you need in Reykjavík?
Two days covers the city: one for the centre on foot, one for Grandi and the museums. Three days lets you add Viðey, Hafnarfjörður or a swim in Laugardalur without rushing. Most people use Reykjavík as a base for the Golden Circle and the south coast rather than staying in it, which is reasonable, but do not give the city less than a day.
Is Reykjavík expensive?
Yes, and eating out is where you feel it. The cheap options are real, though: tap water is free and excellent, the city’s geothermal pools cost a few hundred krónur, Kolaportið and the supermarkets sell skyr, dried fish and rye bread for a fraction of café prices, and the hot dog stand is the cheapest hot meal in the country. Around half the items on this list cost nothing to see.
What should you eat in Reykjavík?
Start with the hot dog, pylsa, ordered ein með öllu. Then skyr, rye bread baked in geothermal ground, lamb soup, and langoustine or cod from the harbour restaurants. Fermented shark and sheep’s head are real foods eaten at midwinter rather than everyday ones. Our guide to Icelandic food goes through them properly.
Where should you stay in Reykjavík?
Stay in 101 Reykjavík, the central postcode, if you want to walk to everything on this list and out to dinner. Laugavegur and the streets off it put you in the middle of the noise; a few blocks towards Tjörnin or up towards Hallgrímskirkja is quieter and the same walk. The Grandi harbour district is newer, cheaper and a fifteen-minute walk from the centre. Compare rooms when you look for a place to stay in Iceland.
How do you get from Keflavík Airport to Reykjavík?
Keflavík is about 50 km (31 mi) from the city and the journey takes 45 to 50 minutes. The Flybus and similar airport coaches run to the BSÍ terminal in time with every arriving flight and will drop you at central hotels for a supplement. A hire car makes sense if you are touring the country afterwards, and not if you are staying in the city, where parking is charged and everything on this list is walkable. Compare car hire rates as soon as your dates are fixed, because Icelandic fleets are small and sell out.
How do you get from Reykjavík to Akureyri?
Flying takes about 45 minutes from Reykjavík’s domestic airport, which is in the city rather than at Keflavík. Driving the 390 km (242 mi) up Route 1 takes about five hours in summer and longer in winter, when conditions on the north coast decide the day. Long-distance buses run the route seasonally. Our guide to driving in Iceland in winter covers what that drive involves between November and April.
What is Reykjavík famous for?
Being the world’s northernmost capital, its geothermal swimming pools, Hallgrímskirkja, Harpa, the northern lights in winter and the midnight sun in summer, and being the base for almost every tour in Iceland. It is also the city Björk, Sigur Rós and Of Monsters and Men came from, which is why the music scene is bigger than the population suggests.
WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
Five things will change how this list goes, and four of them are about what is open when.
- Check whether the Imagine Peace Tower is lit before you book the Viðey ferry. It burns mainly between 9 October and 8 December and around the solstice, not year-round, and the island is a cold place to discover that.
- Go to Kolaportið at the weekend or not at all. It opens Saturday and Sunday only, roughly 11am to 5pm.
- One Reykjavík Art Museum ticket covers three buildings. Hafnarhús, Kjarvalsstaðir and Ásmundarsafn are all included, so if the first one grabs you the other two cost nothing extra.
- Perlan’s observation deck is free even though the museum is not. Same for The Pearl’s, in the same building. If you want the view over Reykjavík rather than the exhibition, walk up and take it.
- Swim at Laugardalslaug instead of paying for a lagoon. It is the biggest pool in Iceland, it costs a local swimming ticket rather than a tourist entry fee, and it is what Reykjavík actually does on a Tuesday evening. Shower naked first; it is not optional.
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the Iceland coverage on this site draws on trips made by her father, the photographer Hans Couwenbergh. The team covers Iceland for independent travellers, including the museums, tours, car hire and accommodation worth booking, and keeps this page current with opening hours and access rules. More on the rest of the country in our guides to Iceland’s destinations and facts about Iceland.
