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CHICAGO TOURISM GUIDE

Chicago may still be stereotyped as the home of sausage-loving, overweight guys who babble on endlessly about "da Bears" or "da Cubs," but in reality the city offers some of the most sophisticated cultural and entertainment options in the country. You'll have trouble fitting in all of Chicago's museums, which offer everything from action (the virtual-reality visit to the Milky Way galaxy at the Adler Planetarium) to quiet contemplation (the Impressionist masterpieces at the Art Institute of Chicago). Gape at Sue, the biggest T-rex fossil ever discovered, at the Field Museum of Natural History, or be entranced by the colorful world of the Butterfly Haven at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Stroll through picture-postcard Lincoln Park Zoo on the Near North Side, and then enjoy the view from the top of the Ferris wheel on historic Navy Pier.

Best of all for visitors, the majority of the places you'll want to visit are in or near downtown, making it easy to plan your day and get from place to place. And because this is a town with a thriving tourist economy, you'll have plenty of visitor-friendly options: walking tours of famous architecture; boat cruises on Lake Michigan; even bus tours of notorious gangster sites. If you're lucky enough to visit when the weather's nice, you can join the locals at our parks and the beaches along Lake Michigan.

Extensive public transportation makes it simple to reach almost every tourist destination, but some of your best memories of Chicago may come from simply strolling the sidewalks. Chicago's neighbourhoods have their own distinct styles and looks, and you'll have a more memorable experience if you don't limit yourself solely to the prime tourist spots. And if you really want to talk about da Bears or da Cubs, chances are you'll find someone more than happy to join in.

Museum Free Days

Plan your time in Chicago carefully and you can save yourself admission fees to some of the city's major museums. Keep in mind that you will still have to pay for special exhibitions and films on free days.

Monday: Adler Planetarium and Field Museum of Natural History (both Sept-Feb, except the last 2 weeks of Dec); Museum of Science and Industry (mid-Sept to Nov and Jan-Feb); Shedd Aquarium (Oct-Feb, except the last 2 weeks of Dec; Oceanarium admission extra)

Tuesday: Adler Planetarium (Sept-Feb, except the last 2 weeks of Dec); Art Institute of Chicago; Field Museum of Natural History (Sept-Feb, except the last 2 weeks of Dec); International Museum of Surgical Science; Museum of Contemporary Art (5-8pm only); Museum of Science and Industry (mid-Sept to Nov and Jan-Feb); Shedd Aquarium (Sept-Feb, except the last 2 weeks of Dec; Oceanarium admission extra)

Thursday: Chicago Children's Museum (5-8pm only)

Friday: Spertus Museum

Sunday: DuSable Museum of African-American History

Always Free: Chicago Cultural Center, Garfield Park Conservatory, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Lincoln Park Conservatory, Lincoln Park Zoo, Martin D'Arcy Gallery of Art, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Newberry Library

The Earth, the Sky & the Sea: The Big Three in the Grant Park Museum Campus
With terraced gardens and broad walkways, the Museum Campus at the southern end of Grant Park makes it easy for pedestrians to visit three of the city's most beloved institutions: the natural history museum, aquarium, and planetarium. The campus is about a 15- to 20-minute walk from the Loop and is easy to reach by bus or subway (a free trolley runs from the Roosevelt Rd. El stop). To get to the Museum Campus from the Loop, head east across Grant Park on East Balbo Drive from South Michigan Avenue, and then trek south along the lakeshore path to the museums. Or approach on the path that begins at 11th Street from South Michigan Avenue. Follow 11th to the walkway that spans the Metra tracks. Cross Columbus Drive, and then pick up the path that will take you under Lake Shore Drive and into the Museum Campus. The CTA no. 146 bus will take you from downtown to all three of these attractions. Call tel. 836-7000 (from any city or suburban area code) for the stop locations and schedule.

The website www.museumcampus.org has information on driving, parking, and public transportation. (Be aware that there is no public parking during Chicago Bears games in the fall; Soldier Field is next to the Museum Campus, and football fans get first dibs on all the surrounding parking spaces.)

Lincoln Park Attractions

Lincoln Park is the city's largest park, and certainly one of the longest. Straight and narrow, the park begins at North Avenue and follows the shoreline of Lake Michigan north for several miles. Within its 1,200 acres are a world-class zoo, a half-dozen beaches, a botanical conservatory, two excellent museums, a golf course, and the meadows, formal gardens, sporting fields, and tennis courts typical of urban parks. To get to the park, take bus no. 22, 145, 146, 147, 151, or 156.

The statue of the standing Abraham Lincoln (just north of the North Ave. and State St. intersection) in the park that bears his name is one of two in Chicago by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (the seated Lincoln is in Grant Park). Saint-Gaudens also designed the Bates Fountain near the conservatory.

A Great View
After a visit to Lincoln Park Zoo or the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, take a quick stroll on Fullerton Avenue to the bridge that runs over the lagoon (just before you get to Lake Shore Dr.). Standing on the south side of Fullerton Avenue, you'll have a great view of the Chicago skyline and Lincoln Park -- an excellent backdrop for family souvenir photos. This path can get very crowded on summer weekends.

Around Hyde Park

Birthplace of atomic fission, home to the University of Chicago and the popular Museum of Science and Industry, Hyde Park is worth a trip south of the Loop. You should allow at least half a day to explore the campus and neighbourhood, one of Chicago's most successfully integrated; set aside a full day if you want to explore museums as well.

Some Hyde Park History -- When Hyde Park was settled in 1850, it became Chicago's first suburb. A hundred years later, in the 1950s, Hyde Park added another first to its impressive resume, one that the current neighbourhood is not particularly proud of: an urban-renewal plan. At the time, a certain amount of old commercial and housing stock -- just the kinds of buildings that would be prized today -- was demolished rather than rehabilitated and was replaced by projects and small shopping malls that actually make some corners of Hyde Park look more suburban, in the modern sense, than they really are.

What Hyde Park can be proud of is that, in racially balkanized Chicago, this neighbourhood has found an alternative vision. As Southern blacks began to migrate to Chicago's South Side during World War I, many whites fled. But most whites here, especially those who wanted to stay near the university, chose integration as the only realistic strategy to preserve their neighbourhood. The 2000 census proved that integration still works: About 40% of the residents are white and 37% are black; there is also a significant Asian population. Hyde Park is decidedly middle class, with pockets of affluence in Kenwood that reflect the days in the early 20th century when the well-to-do moved here to escape the decline of Prairie Avenue. Among Hyde Park-Kenwood's well-known black residents in recent years were the late Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad Ali, and, currently, Louis Farrakhan. Numerous Nation of Islam families continue to worship in a mosque, formerly a Greek Orthodox cathedral, that is one of the neighbourhood's architectural landmarks. The late Mayor Harold Washington also lived here. Surrounding this unusual enclave, however, are many marginal blocks where poverty and slum housing abound. For all its nobility, Hyde Park's achievement in integration merely emphasizes that even more unwieldy than racial differences are socioeconomic ones.

The University of Chicago is widely hailed as one of the more intellectually exciting institutions of higher learning in the country and has been home to some 73 Nobel laureates. The year the university opened its doors, 1892, was a big one for Hyde Park, but 1893 was even bigger. In that year, Chicago, chosen over other cities in a competitive international field, played host to the World's Columbian Exposition, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in America.

To create a fairground, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was enlisted to fill in the marshlands along Hyde Park's lakefront and link what was to become Jackson Park to existing Washington Park on the neighbourhood's western boundary with a narrow concourse called the Midway Plaisance. On the resulting 650 acres -- at a cost of $30 million -- 12 exhibit palaces, 57 buildings devoted to U.S. states and foreign governments, and dozens of smaller structures were constructed under the supervision of architect Daniel Burnham. Most of the buildings followed Burnham's preference for the Classical Revival style and exterior surfaces finished in white stucco. With the innovation of outdoor electric lighting, the sparkling result was the "White City," which attracted 27 million visitors in a single season, from May 1 to October 31, 1893. The exposition sponsors, in that brief time, had remarkably recovered their investment, but within a few short years of the fair's closing, vandalism and fire destroyed most of its buildings. Only the Palace of Fine Arts, occupying the eastern tip of the midway, survives to this day, and it now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

Exploring the University of Chicago
Walking around the Gothic spires of the University of Chicago campus is bound to conjure up images of the cloistered academic life. Allow about an hour to stroll through the grassy quads and dramatic stone buildings (if the weather's nice, do as the students do and vegetate for a while on the grass). If you're visiting on a weekday, your first stop should be the university's Visitors Information Desk (tel. 773/702-9739), on the first floor of Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St., where you can pick up campus maps and get information on university events. The centre is open Monday through Friday from 10am to 7pm. If you stop by on a weekend when the Visitors Information Desk is closed, you can get the scoop on campus events at the Reynolds Clubhouse student center (tel. 773/702-8787).

Start your tour of the campus at the Henry Moore statue Nuclear Energy, on South Ellis Avenue between 56th and 57th streets. It's next to the Regenstein Library, which marks the site of the old Stagg Field, where, on December 2, 1942, the world's first sustained nuclear reaction was achieved in a basement laboratory below the field. Then turn left and follow 57th Street until you reach the grand stone Hull Gate; walk straight to reach the main quad, or turn left through the column-lined arcade to reach Hutchinson Court (designed by John Olmsted, son of revered landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted). The Reynolds Clubhouse, the university's main student centre, is here; you can take a break at the C-Shop cafe or settle down at a table at Hutchinson Commons. The dining room and hangout right next to the cafe will bring to mind the grand dining halls of Oxford and Cambridge.

Other worthy spots on campus include the charming, intimate Bond Chapel, behind Swift Hall on the main quad, and the blocks-long Midway Plaisance, a wide stretch of green that was the site of carnival sideshow attractions during the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 (ever since, the term "midway" has referred to carnivals in general).

The Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5757 S. University Ave. (tel. 773/752-4381; www.semcoop.com), is a treasure trove of academic and scholarly books. Its selection of more than 100,000 titles has won it an international reputation as "the best bookstore west of Blackwell's in Oxford." It's open Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 9pm, Saturday from 10am to 6pm, and Sunday from noon to 6pm.

Enjoying the Outdoors in Hyde Park
Hyde Park is not only a haven for book lovers and culture aficionados; the community also has open-air attractions. Worthy outdoor environments near Lake Michigan include Lake Shore Drive, where many stately apartment houses follow the contour of the shoreline. A suitable locale for a quiet stroll during the day is Promontory Point, at 55th Street and Lake Michigan, a bulb of land that juts into the lake and offers a good view of Chicago to the north and the seasonally active 57th Street beach to the south.

Farther south, just below the Museum of Science and Industry, is Wooded Island in Jackson Park, the site of the Japanese Pavilion during the Columbian Exposition and today a lovely garden of meandering paths. In the Perennial Garden at 59th Street and Stony Island Avenue in Jackson Park, more than 180 varieties of flowering plants display a palette of colours that changes with the seasons.

Kenwood Historic District
A fun side trip for architecture and history buffs is the Kenwood Historic District, just north of Hyde Park. The area originally developed as a suburb of Chicago, when local captains of industry (including Sears founder Julius Rosenwald) began building lavish mansions in the mid-1850s. The neighbourhood's large lots and eclectic mix of architecture (everything from elaborate Italianate to Prairie-style homes) make it unique in Chicago, especially compared to the closely packed buildings in Hyde Park. Although many of the fine homes here became dilapidated after the South Side's "white flight" of the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of black and white middle-class homeowners has been lovingly renovating the one-of-a-kind houses. Today the blocks between 47th and 51st streets (north-south) and Blackstone and Drexel boulevards (east-west) make for a wonderful walking tour, with broad, shady streets full of newly restored mansions.

Exploring the 'Burbs

Oak Park
Architecture and literary buffs alike make pilgrimages to Oak Park, a near suburb on the western border of the city that is easily accessible by car or train. The reason fans of both disciplines flock to this same small town is that Ernest Hemingway was born and grew up here, and Frank Lloyd Wright spent a great deal of his career designing the homes that line the well-maintained streets.

Oak Park has the highest concentration of houses or buildings anywhere designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright, probably the most influential American architect. People come here to marvel at the work of a man who saw his life as a twofold mission: to wage a single-handed battle against excessively ornamental architecture (Victorian, in particular), and to create in its place a new form that would be at the same time functional, appropriate to its natural setting, and stimulating to the imagination.

Not everyone who comes to Oak Park shares Wright's architectural philosophy. But scholars and enthusiasts admire him for being consistently true to his own vision, out of which emerged a unique and genuinely American architectural statement. The reason for Wright's success could stem from the fact that he was a living exemplar of a quintessential American type. In a deep sense, he embodied the ideal of the self-made and self-sufficient individual who had survived, even thrived, in the frontier society -- qualities that he expressed in his almost-puritanical insistence that each spatial or structural form in his buildings serve some useful purpose. But he was also an aesthete in Emersonian fashion, deriving his idea of beauty from natural environments, where apparent simplicity often belies a subtle complexity.

The three principal ingredients of a tour of Wright-designed structures in Oak Park are the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Tour, the Unity Temple Tour, and a walking tour -- guided or self-guided -- to view the exteriors of homes throughout the neighborhood that were built by the architect. Oak Park has 25 homes and buildings by Wright, constructed between 1892 and 1913, which constitute the core output of his Prairie School period.

The Wright Plus Tour--Die-hard fans of the architect will want to be in town on the third Saturday in May for the annual Wright Plus Tour. The public can tour several Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes and other notable Oak Park buildings, in both the Prairie School and the Victorian styles, in addition to Wright's home and studio and the Unity Temple. The tour includes 10 buildings in all. Tickets go on sale March 1 and can sell out by mid-April. Call the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio (tel. 708/848-1976) for details and ticket information.

The North Shore
Between Chicago and the state border of Wisconsin is one of the nation's most affluent residential areas, a swath of suburbia known as the North Shore. Although towns farther west like to co-opt the name for its prestige, the North Shore proper extends from Evanston, Chicago's nearest neighbour to the north, along the lakefront to tony Lake Forest, originally built as a resort for Chicago's aristocracy. Dotted with idyllic, picture-perfect towns such as Kenilworth, Glencoe, and Winnetka, this area has long attracted filmmakers such as Robert Redford, who filmed Ordinary People in Lake Forest, and the North Shore's own John Hughes, who has shot virtually every one of his popular coming-of-age comedies (Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, and so on) here.

Although a Metra train line extends to Lake Forest and neighbouring Lake Bluff, it is recommend that you rent a car and drive north along Sheridan Road, which wends its leisurely way through many of these communities, past palatial homes and mansions designed in a startling array of architectural styles. Next to Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, the entire metropolitan area has no more impressive stretch of roadway.

Exploring Evanston
Despite being much frequented by Chicagoans, Evanston, the city's oldest suburb, retains an identity all its own. A unique hybrid of sensibilities, it manages to combine the tranquillity of suburban life with a highly cultured, urban charm. It's great fun to just wander amid the shops and cafes in its downtown area or along funky Dempster Street at its southern end. The beautiful lakefront campus of Northwestern University (tel. 847/491-3741; www.northwestern.edu) is here, and many of its buildings -- such as Alice Millar Chapel, with its sublime stained-glass facade, and the Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, a fine-arts haven that offers a top-notch collection and intriguing temporary exhibitions -- are well worth several hours of exploration.

Evanston was also the home of Frances Willard, founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Willard House, 1730 Chicago Ave. (tel. 847/328-7500), is open to visitors on the first and third Sundays of every month from 1 to 4pm ($5 adults, $3 children under 13). Nine of the 17 rooms in this old Victorian "Rest Cottage" (as Willard called it) have been converted into a museum of period furnishings and temperance memorabilia. Among her personal effects is the bicycle she affectionately called "Gladys" and learned to ride late in life, in the process spurring women across the country to do the same. The headquarters of the WCTU is still on-site.

Another interesting house museum is the former mansion of Charles Gates Dawes, a wealthy financier who served as vice president under Calvin Coolidge and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for his smooth handling of German reparations on behalf of the League of Nations following World War I. It now houses the Evanston Historical Society, 225 Greenwood St. (tel. 847/475-3410; www.evanstonhistorical.org), which provides 1-hour tours of this restored 100-plus-year-old landmark Thursday through Sunday from 1 to 5pm ($5 adults, $3 seniors and children under 19).

Tucked away in north Evanston, a few miles from the Northwestern campus, is the unusual and informative Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, 2600 Central Park Ave. (tel. 847/475-1030; www.mitchellmuseum.org). The collection ranges from stoneware tools and weapons to the work of contemporary Native American artists. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 5pm (Thurs until 8pm), and Sunday from noon to 4pm. It's closed on holidays and during the last 2 weeks of August. Admission is $5 for adults, $2.50 for seniors and children. Call in advance to arrange a volunteer-led tour.

For a bit of serenity, head to Grosse Point Lighthouse and Maritime Museum, 2601 Sheridan Rd. (tel. 847/328-6961; www.grossepointlighthouse.net), a historic lighthouse built in 1873, when Lake Michigan still teemed with cargo-laden ships. Tours of the lighthouse, situated in a nature centre, take place on weekends from June to September at 2, 3, and 4pm ($5 adults, $3 children 8-12; children under 8 not admitted for safety reasons).

The North & Northwest Suburbs
The North Shore is only one slice of life north of Chicago. To its west lies a sprawling thicket of old and new suburbs, from the bucolic environs of equestrian-minded Barrington and its ring of smaller satellite communities in the far northwest, to near-northwest shopping mecca Schaumburg, home to the gigantic Woodfield Mall.

A more pastoral option for visitors with time on their hands might be a day trip to the historic village of Long Grove, about 30 miles northwest of Chicago. Settled in the 1840s by German immigrants and pioneers traveling west from New England, Long Grove has assiduously preserved its old-fashioned character. Set amid 500 acres of oak- and hickory-tree groves, the village maintains nearly 100 specialty stores, galleries, and restaurants, many of which are in former smithies, wheelwright barns, and century-old residences. (Don't skip the Long Grove Confectionery Company, a local institution.) By village ordinance, all new buildings constructed in the shopping district must conform to the architecture of the early 1900s. The village schedules several cultural and entertainment events, festivals, and art fairs throughout the year. The biggest and best is the annual Strawberry Festival, held during the last weekend in June. Call the village's information center or check the town's website (tel. 847/634-0888; www.longgroveonline.com) for updates on coming events. To get there from the Chicago Loop, take the I-94 tollway north until it separates at I-90, another tollway that runs northwest. Follow I-90 until you reach Route 53, and drive north on 53 until it dead-ends at Lake-Cook Road. Take the west exit off 53 and follow Lake-Cook Road to Hicks Road. Turn right on Hicks Road and then left on Old McHenry Road, which will take you right into the centre of town.

The Western Suburbs
So many corporations have taken to locating their offices beyond the city limits that today more people work in the suburbs than commute into Chicago. Much of the suburban sprawl in counties such as DuPage and Kane consists of seas of aluminum-sided houses that seem to sprout from cornfields overnight. But there are also some lovely older towns, such as upscale Hinsdale and, much farther west, the quaint tandem of St. Charles and Geneva, which lie across the Fox River from each other. Perhaps there is no more fitting symbol of this booming area than the city of Naperville. A historic, formerly rural community with a Main Street U.S.A. downtown district worthy of Norman Rockwell, Naperville has exploded from a population of about 30,000 residents in the early 1970s to approximately 130,000 today -- which makes it the third-largest municipality in the state. Naperville maintains a collection of 19th-century buildings in an outdoor setting known as Naper Settlement, and its river walk is the envy of neighbouring village councils. But much of its yesteryear charm seems to be disappearing bit by bit as new subdivisions and strip malls ooze forth across the prairie.

In & Around the Loop

The heart of the Loop is Chicago's business centre, where you'll find such finance fascinations as the Chicago Board of Trade (the world's largest commodities, futures, and options exchange) and some of the city's most famous early skyscrapers, not to mention the Sears Tower. If you're looking to soak in a real big-city experience, wander the area on a bustling weekday; just make sure you don't get knocked down by a commuter rushing to catch the train. The Loop is also home to one of the city's top museums, the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a number of cultural institutions: Symphony Center (home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), the Auditorium Theatre, the Civic Opera House, the Goodman Theatre, and two fabulously restored historic theatres along Randolph Street. On the eastern edge of the Loop in Grant Park, three popular museums are conveniently located within a quick stroll of each other on the landscaped Museum Campus. Busy Lake Shore Drive, which brings cars zipping past the Museum Campus, was actually rerouted a few years ago to make the area easier to navigate for pedestrians (talk about a visitor-friendly city!).

The Loop Sculpture Tour
Downtown Chicago is a veritable "museum without walls." Examples of public art -- in the form of traditional monuments, murals, and monumental contemporary sculpture -- are on view throughout the city, but their concentration within the Loop and nearby Grant Park is worth noting. The best known of these works are by 20th-century artists, including Picasso, Chagall, Miró, Calder, Moore, and Oldenburg. The newest addition is the massive elliptical sculpture Cloud Gate (known as "The Bean," because it looks like a giant silver kidney bean) by British artist Anish Kapoor. The sculpture, in Millennium Park, was Kapoor's first public commission in the U.S.

With the help of a comprehensive booklet, Loop Sculpture Guide ($3.95 at the gift shop in the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.), you can steer yourself through Grant Park and much of the Loop as you view some 100 examples of Chicago's monumental public art. It provides locations and descriptions of 37 major works, including photographs, plus about 60 other nearby sites.

The single most famous sculpture is Pablo Picasso's Untitled, located in Daley Plaza and constructed out of Cor-Ten steel, the same gracefully rusting material used on the exterior of the Daley Center behind it. Viewed from various perspectives, its enigmatic shape suggests a woman, bird, or dog. Perhaps because it was the button-down Loop's first monumental modern sculpture, its installation in 1967 was met with hoots and heckles, but today "The Picasso" enjoys semiofficial status as the logo of modern Chicago. It is by far the city's most popular photo opportunity among visiting tourists. At noon on weekdays during warm weather, you'll likely find a dance troupe, musical group, or visual-arts exhibition here as part of the city's long-running "Under the Picasso" multicultural program. Call tel. 312/346-3278 for event information.

Grant Park
Thanks to architect Daniel Burnham and his coterie of visionary civic planners -- who drafted the revolutionary 1909 Plan of Chicago -- the city boasts a wide-open lakefront park system unrivaled by most major metropolises. Modeled after the gardens at Versailles, Grant Park (tel. 312/742-PLAY; www.chicagoparkdistrict.com) is Chicago's front yard, composed of giant lawns segmented by allées of trees, plantings, and paths, and pieced together by major roadways and a network of railroad tracks. Covering the greens are a variety of public recreational and cultural facilities (although these are few in number and nicely spread out, a legacy of mail-order magnate Aaron Montgomery Ward's fin de siècle campaign to limit municipal buildings in the park). Incredibly, the entire expanse was created from sandbars, landfill, and Chicago Fire debris; the original shoreline extended all the way to Michigan Avenue.

The northwest corner of Grant Park (bordered by Michigan Ave. and Randolph St.) is the site of Millennium Park, one of the city's grandest recent public-works projects. Who cares that the park cost hundreds of millions more than it was supposed to, or the fact that it finally opened a full 4 years after the actual millennium? It's a winning combination of beautiful landscaping, elegant architecture (the classically inspired Peristyle), and public entertainment spaces (including an ice rink and theater). The park's centerpiece is the dramatic Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Music Pavilion, featuring massive curved ribbons of steel. The Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus stages a popular series of free outdoor classical music concerts here most Wednesday through Sunday evenings in the summer. For a schedule of concert times and dates, contact the Grant Park Music Festival (tel. 312/742-7638; www.grantparkmusicfestival.com). Two public artworks well worth checking out are the kidney bean-shaped sculpture Cloud Gate and the Crown Fountain, where children splash in the shallow water between giant faces projected on video screens.

During the summer a variety of music and food festivals takes over central Grant Park. Annual events that draw big crowds include a blues music festival (in June) and a jazz festival (Labor Day). The Taste of Chicago (tel. 312/744-3315; www.cityofchicago.org/specialevents), purportedly the largest food festival in the world (the city estimates its annual attendance at around 3.5 million), takes place every year for 10 days around the 4th of July. Local restaurants serve up more ribs, pizza, hot dogs, and beer than you'd ever want to see, let alone eat.

Farther south, follow Congress Parkway to the lake and you'll find Buckingham Fountain, the baroque centrepiece of the park, composed of pink Georgia marble and patterned after -- but twice the size of -- the Latona Fountain at Versailles, with adjoining esplanades beautified by rose gardens in season. From April through October, the fountain spurts columns of water up to 150 feet in the air every hour on the hour; beginning at 4pm a whirl of colored lights and dramatic music amps up the drama (the fountain shuts down at 11pm). Concession areas and bathrooms are available on the plaza.

Sculptures and monuments stand throughout the park. They include a sculpture of two Native Americans on horseback, The Bowman and the Spearman (at Congress Pkwy. and Michigan Ave.), which has become the park's trademark. It was installed in 1928. Also here are likenesses of Copernicus, Columbus, and Lincoln, the latter by the great American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, located on Congress Parkway between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive. On the western edge of the park, at Adams Street, is the Art Institute , and at the southern tip, in the area known as the Museum Campus, are the Field Museum of Natural History, the Adler Planetarium, and the Shedd Aquarium.

Along South Michigan Avenue
Fashion and glamour might have moved north to the Magnificent Mile, but Chicago's grandest stretch of boulevard is still Michigan Avenue, south of the river. From a little north of the Michigan Avenue bridge all the way down to the Field Museum, South Michigan Avenue runs parallel to Grant Park on one side and the Loop on the other. A stroll along this boulevard in any season offers both visual and cultural treats. Particularly impressive is the great wall of buildings from Randolph Street south to Congress Parkway (beginning with the Chicago Cultural Center and terminating at the Auditorium Building) that architecture buffs refer to as the "Michigan Avenue Cliff."

Prairie Avenue
Prairie Avenue, south of the Loop, was the city's first "Gold Coast," and its most famous address is Glessner House, a must-see for anyone interested in architectural history. The only surviving Chicago building designed by Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson, the 1886 structure represented a dramatic shift from traditional Victorian architecture (and inspired a young Frank Lloyd Wright).

The imposing granite exterior gives the home a forbidding air. (Railway magnate George Pullman, who lived nearby, complained, "I do not know what I have ever done to have that thing staring me in the face every time I go out my door.") But step inside and the home turns out to be a welcoming, cozy retreat, filled with Arts and Crafts furnishings.

Visits to Glessner House are by guided tour only (they can also be combined with tours of the nearby Clarke House Museum, a Greek Revival home that's the oldest surviving house in the city). Tours begin at 1, 2, and 3pm Wednesday through Sunday (except major holidays). Tours are first-come, first-served, with no advance reservations except for groups of 10 or more.

1800 S. Prairie Ave. tel. 312/326-1480. www.glessnerhouse.org. Admission $10 adults, $9 students and seniors, $5 children 5 to 12, free for children under 5. Bus: 1, 3, or 4 from Michigan Avenue at Jackson Boulevard (get off at 18th St.).

North of the Loop

Most of these sights are either on the Magnificent Mile (North Michigan Ave.) and its surrounding blocks or not too far from there, on the Near North Side.

Rock Around the World
The impressive Gothic Tribune Tower, just north of the Chicago River on the east side of Michigan Avenue, is home to one of the country's media giants and the Chicago Tribune newspaper. But it's also notable for an array of architectural fragments jutting out from the exterior. The newspaper's notoriously despotic publisher, Robert R. McCormick, started the collection shortly after the building's completion in 1925, gathering pieces during his world travels. Tribune correspondents then began supplying building fragments that they acquired on assignment. Each one now bears the name of the structure and country whence it came. There are 138 pieces in all, including chunks and shards from the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the White House, the Arc de Triomphe, the Berlin Wall, the Roman Colosseum, London's Houses of Parliament, the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Giza, Egypt, and the original tomb of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois.