Chicago Attractions

Often called Chicago's front yard, Grant Park really does create that impression with its broad, tree-bordered lawns spread out like a green picnic blanket before a wall of downtown high-rises. There's no better place to kick off your sightseeing itinerary since most of Chicago's top attractions either adjoin or are within sight of the park. The park's centerpiece is Buckingham Memorial Fountain, a city icon since its 1927 installation. Within its wide pool, four stylized bronze seahorses spew water at three tiers of overflowing basins. At night the splashing water is synchronized to a light and music show.

Projecting above the leafy canopy along Michigan Avenue is the park's most impressive building and a definite must-see: the Beaux-Arts Art Institute of Chicago, a AAA GEM attraction. Pass between the huge bronze lions guarding the main entrance and into the museum's echoing skylighted halls, and you'll likely be surprised by how many familiar faces you meet. There's the dour farmer and his daughter from Grant Wood's "American Gothic" on view not far from the haunted-looking couple drinking coffee at an all-night diner in Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks." You're liable to have many such déjà vu moments thanks to mass-produced versions available at shopping malls everywhere. These, however, are the originals.

But you need not confine your appreciation of art to the indoors when just across Monroe Street, at the northwest corner of Grant Park, is Millennium Park, another AAA GEM attraction. Opened in 2004 on the site of a defunct rail yard, the park boasts stunning examples of alfresco modern art and architecture including the undulating stainless steel walls of the Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge, both designed by "starchitect" Frank Gehry. A photo of Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" sculpture, which looks like a gigantic droplet of solidified mercury, is a must even for those connoisseurs who don't think much of it: You can capture an artfully distorted view of the Chicago skyline reflected in its mirror-shiny surface.

Of course, in a city noted for its architecture, a tour focusing on the topic is de rigueur. The Chicago Architecture Foundation Shop and Archicenter, a AAA GEM attraction, is just across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. Here you can choose among more than 90 different tours that'll suit about any taste or interest. You can also select your mode of transportation: bus, boat, bicycle or by foot.

If you want even more of a boat tour selection, head through the park and north along the lakeshore about a mile and a half to the Navy Pier, a AAA GEM attraction from which a flotilla of sightseeing craft depart. Of course the pier, with its carnival-style rides, restaurants, shops, concert venues, street performers, IMAX theater and two museums--one geared toward children under 12, the other displaying stained glass windows--is a worthwhile sightseeing destination by itself. You'll be able to take in a wide swath of Chicago's spectacular skyline from the pier's eastern end, and in summer the night sky explodes with color and light during weekly fireworks shows.

On the southern end of Grant Park lies Museum Campus Chicago, a lakefront expanse shared by no fewer than three AAA GEM attractions. Foremost among these stands The Field Museum , primarily known for its natural history exhibits but featuring anthropological specimens as well. A tyrannosaur named Sue, the most complete T. rex skeleton yet found, occupies pride of place in the museum's main entrance hall along with two preserved elephants, prominent museum residents since 1906.

What neighboring John G. Shedd Aquarium lacks in tyrannosaur fossils, it more than makes up for with dramatic aquatic displays including a Caribbean reef exhibit at the center of a skylighted Beaux Arts rotunda and the Oceanarium, which replicates a Pacific Northwest Coast habitat for harbor seals, beluga whales and Pacific white-sided dolphins. Don't miss the Wild Reef exhibit where panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows will give you an eerie sense of floating among the aquarium's school of sharks.

In terms of subject matter, leaping from our world's oceans into the vastness of space is as easy as walking to nearby Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum, where the sky takes center stage courtesy of a glass roof that permits daylight to flood the main exhibit area. A planetarium replicates a nighttime view of the heavens in addition to showing off colorful nebulas and spiral galaxies. Displays of antique astronomical instruments reveal the artistry involved in producing these early devices, and a motion simulator theater takes visitors on a virtual journey through the universe.
Although separated from Museum Campus Chicago by 6 miles of lakefront, the Museum of Science and Industry, AAA GEM attraction in the Hyde Park neighborhood, shares much with its downtown counterparts. Here again is a decades-old Beaux Arts palace crammed with an eclectic mix of exhibits--only in this case the theme is technology and engineering. The question isn't what will you see, but what won't you see inside these venerable walls. Don't be surprised to find a large portion of a 727 passenger jet, a 1936 streamlined locomotive with passenger cars and even a German U-boat captured during World War II.

While Chicago remains the birthplace of the skyscraper, the city can no longer claim to have the world's tallest building--a distinction it enjoyed most recently 1973-96 courtesy of the 1,450-foot-tall, 110-story Sears Tower. While the building's rank has slipped a bit, it's ability to wow visitors who ascend to the Skydeck, a AAA GEM attraction, remains undiminished. On clear days views extend for 50 miles in every direction, a spectacular panorama that you also can enjoy from The Hancock Observatory at John Hancock Center. While at a mere 1,000 feet, the observatory falls somewhat short of Sears Tower's Skydeck, you'll hardly notice the difference when you step onto the observatory's Skywalk for a thrilling, open-air view.

From your aerie atop the John Hancock Center you'll spy a narrow green patch along Lake Michigan north of downtown. A AAA GEM attraction, Lincoln Park started out as a small, makeshift cemetery in the 19th-century but now spreads out over more than 1,000 acres. In addition to monuments, playgrounds, beaches and recreation trails, the park's borders encompass a conservatory and Lincoln Park Zoo, where such endangered critters as black rhinos, snow leopards and western lowland gorillas make their home in enclosures scattered among the zoo's historic buildings.