Cathedral of Christ the King

This guide to the Cathedral of Christ the King in Reykjavik opens with a puzzle: the tower of the country's largest church stops short, flat and spireless, and always has. It traces the story back to French priest Bernard Bernard, who arrived on windswept farmland around 1864 determined to bring the Catholic Church back to Iceland three centuries after the Reformation, and to the small wooden chapel he and Jean-Baptiste Baudoin raised against the wind. You'll hear how architect Guðjón Samúelsson, who later designed Hallgrímskirkja, was asked to replace that outgrown wooden church with something far larger, consecrated in July 1929. Look up at the blunt, unfinished tower and imagine what was meant to top it.