Reykjavik's history hides in plain sight: a churchyard older than the city under a downtown square, Iceland's oldest stone house on a five-minute ferry ride, and a 1909 villa where the Cold War began to thaw. Three days from the Sagas to the Cod Wars.
The national collection runs from a 10th-century pagan boat burial to the present. Centrepieces: the carved Valþjófsstaður church door (c.1200) and the Þórsmörk bronze figure. Suðurgata 41, daily 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays in winter.
Seventeen silicone tableaux stage the Sagas and Íslendingabók: Ingólfur Arnarson's landing in 874, the conversion at the Alþingi in the year 1000, and the beheading of bishop Jón Arason at Skálholt in 1550.
Viðeyjarstofa (1755) is Iceland's oldest stone house, standing beside the excavated remains of the Augustinian monastery founded in 1225 and seized at the 1539 Reformation. The ferry from Skarfabakki takes five minutes.
Víkurgarður was Reykjavik's churchyard from the settlement until 1838, and graves from the 11th century lie under the grass. Facing it, Aðalstræti 10 (1762) is the oldest surviving house in the city, built for the Innréttingar wool works.
Set in a 1947 fish-freezing plant, the museum's Cod Wars gallery covers the 1958–1976 confrontations with the Royal Navy. Guided tours board the coast guard vessel Óðinn, which cut the trawl warps of British trawlers.
The dolerite Parliament House of 1881 faces Jón Sigurðsson's statue on Austurvöllur, where the Kitchenware Revolution of January 2009 forced out the government. The Icelandic republic was declared by this parliament in June 1944.
Iceland's first sculptor built this fortress-like white studio in 1916 on land that was then bare hillside above town. Inside are some 300 plaster and bronze works; his Ingólfur Arnarson still stands on Arnarhóll.
Built in 1909 as the French consulate and later home to poet Einar Benediktsson, Höfði hosted the Reagan–Gorbachev summit of October 1986 that broke the deadlock on nuclear arms. The interior is closed; the lawn and plaque are open.
Twenty relocated timber and turf buildings form a village around the 19th-century Árbær farm, preserved from 1957. The turf-roofed church arrived from Silfrastaðir in 1959, and staff in period wool work the smithy and dairy.
The lava-rock quarter between Aðalstræti and Garðastræti kept its 19th-century timber cottages, tar-black and clad in corrugated iron. Fischersund, Mjóstræti and Brattagata still follow the plot lines of the 1752 Innréttingar workshops.
Guðjón Samúelsson designed Reykjavik's first indoor pool in 1937, twelve years before he completed Hallgrímskirkja. The original tiled changing cubicles survive; the outdoor pool and hot tubs were added in 2017.
Consecrated in 1838, the old cemetery holds roughly 30,000 graves beneath some 60 tree species — effectively Reykjavik's oldest woodland. Guðrún Oddsdóttir was the first buried, and her plot is treated as the guardian grave.