Sights in Nuuk Town (Godthåb)
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Greenland National Museum
The spacious, well-presented Greenland National Museum is based in an extended 1936 warehouse. Its better exhibits include an interesting section on 1950s social change and a geological room emphasising that the world's oldest rocks (3.8 billion years old) come from the Nuuk region. However, the unmissable climax is the mummy room. Here a trio of mummified 15th-century women and a very spooky six-month-old child stare blindly out from their dimly lit display cases. Their fur clothes and kammiks (traditional boots) are intricately sewn and embroidered, but their cause of death remains uncertain. Found at Qilakitsoq near Uummannaq, they made the cover of National Geographic
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Santa Claus Post House
The appealing little Santa Claus Post House is a Victorian-style mailroom with Christmassy décor and framed curiosities like a 1946 letter from Ireland to 'Santy Claus, Greenland'. The mail desk is used in December to write and send Christmas greetings cards from Father Christmas. You can order one for the child of your choice: pay for and address it at the tourist-office counter. Some of the Dkr25 charge goes to help local charities.
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University Library
The University Library was established in 1747 as the New Herrnhut Mission (House of Moravian Brethren), originally set up by a trio of missionaries who arrived soon after Hans Egede. It's a most attractive red wooden building topped with bell-shaped campanile and set behind a forest of white, wooden grave posts. In the grass leading down towards a peaceful pebble beach are several ruins of old turf houses. The sea views are very pleasant.
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Home Rule Government
The Home Rule Government has an art-decked corridor. Except on Fridays when it's in session, you are free to poke your head into the little parliament chamber, though it's polite to ask first at the parliament secretary's office (room 62). There's not much to see, but a visit is more interesting accompanied by the political explanations of a guide (Dkr198, tours through the tourist office).
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Kittat
Kittat is a low-key fur workshop that specialises in making traditional style costumes and kammiks. Anyone can peep inside at the small, functional flensing and sewing rooms. The skin-drying racks are outside. Along with the museum and a carver's co-operative, this is where you'd end up on the tourist office's rather pricey Dkr198 'handicraft tour'.
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Katuaq Cultural Centre
The spacious Katuaq Cultural Centre is by far Nuuk's finest piece of modern architecture, a sinuous wooden wave edged in glass. It houses the Greenland Art School, the NAPA Nordic Institute and a reading library as well as hosting exhibitions, conferences, concerts, a cinema and Nuuk's best café.
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Institute of Natural Resources
At the north edge of town near the sweet little golf course is the Institute of Natural Resources, in a pair of glass-nosed wooden-slab buildings that look passingly photogenic in low evening light. A tourist-office tour (Dkr198, one hour) takes you inside on certain working-day afternoons.
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Block P
Graffiti-daubed Block P is Nuuk's biggest housing monstrosity. It's so depressing that it's almost an attraction in itself. Only five storeys high but 64 apartments long, it houses over 1% of Greenland's population under one roof.
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City Hall
The City Hall is not architecturally distinguished, but it's worth looking inside to see the impressive 1998 tapestry of Inuit life. Curiously, it includes a vignette about missionary Hans Egede.
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Hans Egede House
The sturdy 1728 Hans Egede House is the oldest in Greenland and has a pretty vegetable garden. Originally home to Nuuk's missionary founder, it's now the venue for official government receptions.
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Teacher Training College
The fine 1907 Teacher Training College is backed by the horned silhouette of Sermitsiaq (1210m), a tent-shaped island peak.
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