Hallgrímskirkja

Hallgrímskirkja is Iceland's largest church and Reykjavik's most recognisable landmark — a 74.5-metre expressionist concrete tower designed by Guðjón Samúelsson in 1937 (but not completed until 1986) whose facade is shaped to evoke basalt columns, the hexagonal volcanic rock formations that define Iceland's landscape. The tower observation deck provides the best 360-degree view of Reykjavik — the colourful tin-roofed houses, the harbour, and on clear days the Snæfellsjökull glacier 120 kilometres across the bay.

The church took 41 years to build (Icelandic construction moves at the pace of a country with 330,000 people and long winters), and the organ inside — a 5,275-pipe instrument built by Johannes Klais of Bonn — is one of the largest in Europe. The statue of Leif Erikson in front of the church (donated by the United States in 1930 for Iceland's Alþingi millennium) points west toward North America, which Leif reached 500 years before Columbus.