Landmarks in Chicago
24 landmarks to discover on our audio walking tours of Chicago.
Adler Planetarium
First planetarium in the Americas. Best skyline view in Chicago.
Art Institute Lions
The iconic lions that get dressed up when Chicago wins championships.
Chicago Cultural Center
A hidden $35 million Tiffany dome that nobody knew existed for decades.
Couch Tomb
A tomb in a public park. And it's not empty.
Field Museum
Built on garbage. Filled with dinosaurs. Welcome to the Field Museum.
Lincoln Park Conservatory
Therapy with ferns. A Victorian glass house in Chicago.
Marina City
The "corn cob" towers—the architect really wishes you'd call them flower petals.
Shedd Aquarium
They built a train to haul seawater from Florida. For the fish.
Standing Lincoln
The greatest Lincoln sculpture ever made — by a sculptor who basically traced.
The Biograph Theater
Where John Dillinger watched his last movie before being gunned down by the FBI.
The Chicago Theatre
Neutral ground during Prohibition—where rival gangsters watched the same shows.
The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge
A real 1920s speakeasy where you can sit in Al Capone's actual booth.
Water Tower
The tiny Gothic castle that survived while all of Chicago burned around it.
Café Brauer
The most beautiful building in a public park that was also, for decades, a storage shed.
Holy Name Cathedral
A gorgeous cathedral with bullet holes from a 1926 gangland assassination still visible.
Merchandise Mart
The Kennedy family's best investment—$12.5M in, $625M out.
Monadnock Building
The before and after of the skyscraper, side by side in one building.
Riverwalk — Big Flush
You're standing next to a river that flows the wrong direction.
Riverwalk — Modern
For most of Chicago's history, this river was a dumpster.
Soldier Field
The only building to ever LOSE National Historic Landmark status.
Sullivan Center
The masterpiece of the father of skyscrapers—who died broke and alone.
The Rookery
A Romanesque fortress outside, light-filled atrium inside—renovated by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Tribune Tower
Gothic skyscraper decorated with 150+ stolen stones from the Parthenon, Great Wall, and more.
Wrigley Building
The gum magnate's glowing white tower—designed so you'd think about chewing.
Chicago Walking Tours
Visit these landmarks and more on a self-guided audio tour.
Bootleggers, Bullets & Baloney
Walk through Prohibition-era Chicago, when this city was run by gangsters, corrupt politicians, and men with surprisingly good taste in suits. Everything I tell you will sound absolutely true. Some of it is. Some of it... I made up. Your job? Try to figure it out.
Chicago Riverwalk: Fire, Gangsters & Deep Dish
The Great Fire, Al Capone, and why the river runs backwards. Chicago history is wild enough without us making things up. But we did anyway.
Museum Campus: Landfill of Dreams
The story of three world-class museums built on fifty-seven acres of garbage, one controversial stadium, and a midnight bulldozer raid.
Steel, Stone, and Ego
After the Great Fire, Chicago handed the keys to a bunch of ambitious architects and said — fix this. What followed was a century of skyscrapers, scandals, and egos the size of the buildings themselves. You'll meet the man who invented "form follows function" and died broke, a political dynasty that turned one building into a fifty-times fortune, and an artist who REALLY wishes you'd stop calling his sculpture "the bean."
The Best Free Day in Chicago
One of America's oldest free zoos. A Victorian glass house. A hidden garden designed by a man who cashed in his life insurance for flowers. And roughly twelve thousand unmarked graves. All free.
The Postcard Tour
Chicago's greatest hits — and the stories behind them. A river that flows backward, buildings covered in stolen rocks, towers that look like corn cobs, and a giant bean made by a man who wishes you'd stop calling it a bean.
Hear the stories behind these places
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