Imagine Peace Tower
A column of light rises 4,000 metres into the Arctic sky from a wishing well on a small island — Yoko Ono's memorial to John Lennon, running on geothermal power.
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The location was dedicated on what would have been Lennon's 66th birthday in 2006, and the tower was officially unveiled a year later on his 67th. It fires 15 searchlights through prisms from a 10-metre wide wishing well, often punching straight through cloud cover. More than one million written wishes — collected by Ono for her Wish Trees project — are buried beneath the monument. The white stone base carries "Imagine Peace" carved in 24 languages.
What to look for
- "Imagine Peace" inscribed in 24 languages on the white stone monument at the base
- The 10-metre wishing well the beam projects from — the physical heart of the installation
- The light column on a clear night, visibly reaching altitude well above any cloud layer
The tower only illuminates during three windows: Oct 9–Dec 8 (Lennon's birthday to the date he was shot), Dec 31–Jan 6, and one week around the spring equinox.
Imagine Peace Tower is one of 17 sights worth the detour in Reykjavik, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Reykjavik pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Reykjavik
- HallgrímskirkjaA 74-metre church modeled on Iceland's volcanic basalt columns — 41 years in the making, visible from nearly anywhere in the city.
- Icelandic Phallological MuseumOne exhibit needs a magnifying glass; another once measured 170 cm. Both are real.
- LaugardalsvöllurThe city that dreamed of a sporting venue in 1871 — when Reykjavík held just 2,000 people — finally opened a football stadium here in 1959.
- National Museum of IcelandA carved wooden door where a knight slays a dragon and gains a lion as his companion — and that is the headline object.
- Bessastaðir — Presidential ResidenceSnorri Sturluson farmed here in the 1200s. Turkish slave raiders attacked in 1627. Today the president of Iceland calls it home.
- HöfðiReagan and Gorbachev met here in 1986 in talks that technically failed yet cracked open the path to the Cold War's end.