Museum Campus, Chicago

A 57-acre lakefront park housing three of Chicago's biggest museums — all built on landfill, because Chicago's answer to everything is "just add more land."

1 tour14 places

Walking Tours in Museum Campus

47 min•12 stops

History Tour

Museum Campus: Landfill of Dreams

Everything on this campus stands on ground Chicago manufactured out of a burned-down city. A marble temple holds the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex on Earth, found because somebody got a flat tire. An aquarium a thousand miles from the sea got filled by hauling a million gallons of ocean up from Key West in railroad tank cars. There's the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, a two-thousand-year-old Roman column Mussolini sent as a thank-you gift, and a downtown airport a mayor erased with bulldozers at one in the morning. Walk the lakefront from Buckingham Fountain to Soldier Field. Nearly all of it is documented. A few small things I mixed into the fill myself. See how many seams you can find before I show you.

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Places in Museum Campus

Landmarks and stories from Museum Campus that you'll hear about on the tour.

Adler Planetarium

First planetarium in the Americas. Best skyline view in Chicago.

Field Museum

Built on garbage. Filled with dinosaurs. Welcome to the Field Museum.

Shedd Aquarium

They built a train to haul seawater from Florida. For the fish.

Adler Planetarium — The First Sky in the Hemisphere

Your brain is going to file the building at the end of this peninsula as a nineteen-thirties idea of a flying saucer. Close enough.

Buckingham Fountain

That enormous pink marble wedding cake in front of you is Buckingham Fountain, and every part of it is pointed at the lake on purpose. Start with the four bronze sea horses. They aren't decoration and they aren't Greek.

Grant Park — The Fight to Keep It Empty

Turn back toward the skyline and notice what's missing. There's a solid wall of towers along Michigan Avenue, and then, between that wall and the water, a long green nothing.

Northerly Island

Made from garbage. Destroyed by bulldozers at midnight. Now a nature sanctuary.

Northerly Island — The Airport That Was Erased Overnight

The prairie grass ahead of you is a runway. Northerly Island was a working downtown airport until a mayor decided, in the middle of one night, that it wasn't going to be one anymore. Start with the name, which is wrong in two directions.

Shedd Aquarium — They Shipped the Ocean

The Shedd Aquarium is a Greek temple covered in seafood. Get close to the trim around the doors and windows and the classical restraint falls apart.

Soldier Field

Those two long rows of Doric columns are Soldier Field, or at least the part of it that's original. Everything you can see between and above them arrived seventy-nine years later, and Chicago has never fully forgiven anyone for it.

Solidarity Drive

The causeway running out toward the planetarium is called Solidarity Drive, and there are three bronze men standing in the median of it. All three were made for somewhere else. All three got moved.

Sue and the Lions of Tsavo

The east face of the Field Museum, with the lake at your back. On the other side of that marble is a forty-foot Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue, and she was found because somebody got a flat tire. August, nineteen ninety.

The Balbo Monument

A stone column is standing in the grass beside the lakefront path, greenish, about thirteen feet tall, wearing a plaque nobody reads.

The Field Museum — A Greek Temple on Landfill

Three hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet of white Georgia marble, quarried in the South and shipped a thousand miles north. That's the Field Museum, and large parts of it were copied off a specific temple in Athens.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can I do in Museum Campus, Chicago?

Museum Campus is home to 14 notable attractions and landmarks. Explore the area with 1 self-guided audio tour from Bad Historian.

Is there a walking tour of Museum Campus?

Yes. Bad Historian offers 1 self-guided audio walking tour through Museum Campus. Download the app, choose a tour, head to the starting point, and press play.

What are the top attractions in Museum Campus?

Museum Campus in Chicago features landmarks, historic sites, and hidden gems. Explore them all with audio narration in the Bad Historian app.

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Hear the stories of Museum Campus

Download the app, head to the starting point, and press play. The stories start themselves.

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