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| Photo by Chait Goli |
Chicago is the most populous city in the US state of Illinois and the US Midwest. With a population of 2,746,388 as of the 2020 census, it is the third most populous city in the United States, after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second most populous state in the United States, Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially known as "Chicagoland," with 9.6 million residents.
Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated in 1837 as a city near the gateway between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the middle of the 19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 people homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. The city of Chicago has made notable contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful movement, and steel-framed skyscrapers.
Chicago is an international center for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications and transportation. It has the world's largest and most diverse derivatives market, generating 20% of total volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is ranked among the six busiest airports in the world by average passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's rail hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any metropolitan area in the world, earning $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.
Chicago is a major destination for tourism, including its cultural institutions and visitors to Lake Michigan. Chicago culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvised comedy), food, dance, and music (especially jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house There is music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago offers an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Professional sports in Chicago include all major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.
1. Navy Pier
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| Photo by Pixabay |
An interesting amusement park that engages both children and adults. With the backdrop of Lake Michigan, Marine Pier offers a variety of fun activities to enjoy. The first look at the Navy Pier shows you the great Ferris wheel. But don't judge the book by its cover—Navy Pier has plenty of activities for everyone. except swing seat rides, carousels and ferris wheels; Kids love entering the Funhouse Maze and exploring the Chicago Children's Museum. For adults, there's a beer garden on the lake, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, a ballroom, and several water activities. Some of these are free, others you will pay for.
2. Art Institute of Chicago
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| Photo by Chait Goli |
Founded in 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. It is located in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Grant Park, Chicago. Its collection, managed by 11 curatorial departments, includes works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and Grant Wood's American Gothic. Its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art is enhanced by more than 30 special exhibitions held annually that illuminate aspects of the collection and present educational and scientific research.
As a research institution, the Art Institute has a Department of Conservation and Conservation Science, five conservation laboratories, and the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, one of the largest art history and architecture libraries in the nation.
The museum building was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and due to the growth of the collection, several additions have taken place since then. The Modern Wing, designed by Renzo Piano, is the latest expansion, and when it opened in 2009 it increased the museum's footprint to nearly one million square feet. This made it the second largest art museum in the United States, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The Art Institute is affiliated with the Art Institute of Chicago, a leading art school, making it one of the few remaining integrated art institutions in the United States.
3. North Avenue Beach
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| By Jabab at English Wikipedia |
A beach house offering 22,000 square feet of space is docked along this famous beach. This beach house has one of the best city views. It features portholes and upper decks to watch the horizon, or joggers, skaters or cyclists ride the lakefront path.
North Avenue Beach has a variety of restaurants and cafes like Shoreclub and Castaways that specialize in serving a variety of seafood, making it an ideal spot for lunch. After lunch, guests can rent bicycles, paddleboards, and wakeboards for a picnic. Take a nice, long walk and shop for clothes and other interesting souvenirs from street vendors along the beach.
4. Foster Beach
People who visit the park mostly celebrate milestones, set up picnics, socialize with family or friends, and engage in other events. Along the beach there is a path that leads up to the hills, which is a great place to relax and observe the beauty of Chicago. Every year, this beach hosts an annual event - the Chicago Full Moon Jam. The festival brings a lot of bands, fire dancers and also hosts a lot of fun activities. There is also a distance swim from the center tower to the north end of the beach.
5. Shedd Aquarium
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The Shedd Aquarium (formally the John G. Shedd Aquarium) is an indoor public aquarium in Chicago. Opened on May 30, 1930, the 5 million US gal (19,000,000 L; 4,200,000 imp gal) aquarium houses about 32,000 animals, making it the third largest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere after the Georgia Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The Shedd Aquarium is a highly ranked world aquarium and at one time was the largest indoor facility in the world. It is the first indoor aquarium with a permanent saltwater fish collection. The aquarium is located near Lake Michigan on the city's museum campus, which also includes top-rated institutions such as the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum of Natural History.
In 2015, the Shedd Aquarium had 2.02 million visitors. It was the most visited aquarium in the Western Hemisphere in 2005 and became the most visited cultural institution in Chicago in 2007. The aquarium contains 1,500 species including fish, marine mammals, birds, snakes, amphibians and insects. The aquarium has received "Best in Show" awards from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) for Seahorse Symphony in 1999, Amazon Rising in 2004 and Wild Reef. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
6. The Chicago History Museum
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| By Alanscottwalker - |
The Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret the history of Chicago. The museum has been located at the intersection of North Avenue in the old downtown Triangle neighborhood at 1601 North Clark Street in Lincoln Park since the 1930s, where the museum has expanded several times. The club, long known as CHS, adopted the name Chicago History Museum in September 2006 for its public presence.
6. Field Museum
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| Photo by Quang Vuong |
The Field Museum (FMNH), also known as the Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the quantity and quality of its educational and scientific programs and its extensive collections of scientific specimens and artifacts. Permanent exhibits that attract 2 million visitors annually include fossils, current cultures from around the world, and interactive programs that demonstrate today's urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, Marshall Field, head of department stores. The museum and its collections date back to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the artifacts displayed at the Exposition.
The museum maintains a temporary exhibition program of touring shows as well as in-house produced thematic exhibitions. Professional staff maintain a collection of over 24 million specimens and objects that provide the basis for the museum's scientific research programs. These collections include extant biodiversity, gems, meteorites, fossils and extensive anthropological collections and cultural artifacts from around the world. The museum's library contains over 275,000 books, journals and photo archives focused on biological, biological methods. , archaeology, ethnology, and material culture, supports the museum's academic-research faculty and exhibit development. Academic faculty and scientific staff engage in field expeditions, biodiversity and cultural research on every continent, local and international student training, and stewardship of rich specimen and artifact collections. They collaborate closely with public program exhibitions and educational initiatives.
7. Willis Tower
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| By Chris6d - Own work, Public Domain |
The Willis Tower, originally and still commonly known as the Sears Tower, is a 110-story, 1,451-foot (442.3 m) skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), it opened in 1973 as the world's tallest building, a title it held for nearly 25 years. It is the third tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the 23rd tallest building in the world. More than 1.7 million people visit the Skydeck observation deck each year, the highest point in the United States, making it one of Chicago's most popular tourist destinations.
The building is located on a site bounded by Franklin Street, Jackson Boulevard, Wacker Drive and Adams Street. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes" clustered in a 3 × 3 matrix. Seven tubes are repositioned upstairs. The tower has 108 floors by standard measures, although the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. The facade is made of anodized aluminum and black glass. The base of the building contains a retail complex called Catalogue. The lower half of the tower was originally occupied by the retail company Sears, whose headquarters remained there until 1994, while the upper floors were rented out.
The structure was known as the Sears Tower from its construction until the naming rights were entered into a lease with the Willis Group in 2009. Local residents still call the building by its old name. As of April 2018, the building's largest tenant is United Airlines, which occupies about 20 floors. Other major tenants include the building's namesake, Willis Towers Watson, and law firms Schiff Hardin and Seyfarth Shaw. Morgan Stanley became the building's fourth largest tenant in 2017.
8. Adler Planetarium
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| By Sea Cow - Own work |
Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago's Adler Planetarium offers a fascinating journey through the universe. As the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, it features immersive exhibits, state-of-the-art theaters and telescope observatories. Viewers explore astronomical wonders from the origins of the universe to cutting-edge space exploration. Adler Planetarium illuminates the mysteries of the universe for all.
9. Millenium Park
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| Photo by Pixabay |
One of the best places to visit in Chicago, this third millennium public park in Chicago was inaugurated in 2004 and is a well-known civic hub close to Lake Michigan. One of Chicago's most picturesque locations, Millennium Park has been portrayed in a number of films and television series. It is also the site of a number of important events, including the yearly Grand Park Music Festival.
10. Cloud Gate
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| Photo by Chait Goli: |
Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor that is the centerpiece of Granger Plaza in Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture and Granger Plaza are located atop the Park Grille, between the Chase Promenade and the McCormick Tribune Plaza and Ice Rink. Built between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture was nicknamed "The Bean" because of its shape, a name Kapoor later grew to love. Kapoor himself even uses this title when referring to his work. Made of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It measures 33 x 66 x 42 feet (10 x 20 x 13 m), and weighs 110 short tons (100 t; 98 long tons).
Kapoor's design was inspired by liquid mercury, and the sculptural surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors can walk around the 12-foot (3.7 m) high arch of Cloud Gate. On the underside is the "omphalos" (Greek for "nose"), a concave chamber that distorts and multiplies reflections. The sculpture builds on many of Kapoor's artistic themes, and is popular with tourists as a photo opportunity for its unique reflective qualities.
This sculpture was the result of a design competition. After Kapoor's design was selected, many technical issues arose regarding the construction and assembly of the design, in addition to issues related to the upkeep and maintenance of the sculpture. Various experts were consulted, some of whom believed that the plan was unworkable. Eventually, a viable method was found, but construction of the sculpture fell behind schedule. It was unveiled in an incomplete form at the Millennium Park grand opening in 2004, then hidden again while it was completed. Cloud Gate was officially dedicated on May 15, 2006, and has since gained considerable popularity both locally and internationally.
11. Lincoln Park Zoo
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| Photo by Petr Ganaj: |
Lincoln Park Zoo, also known as Lincoln Park Zoo, is a 35-acre (14 ha) zoo in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois. The zoo was founded in 1868 and is the fourth oldest in North America. It is one of a small number that offers free entry. The zoo is a recognized member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). In 2019, it became a recognized herbarium.
Lincoln Park Zoo is home to a variety of animals. The zoo's exhibits include about 1,100 animals from about 200 species, including big cats, polar bears, penguins, gorillas, reptiles, monkeys and other species.
Lincoln Park Zoo was home to a bur oak tree estimated to be over 250 years old. The tree was cut down on May 2, 2023 due to ill health. Thirty-six tree saplings have been grafted onto rootstocks and are growing at the Morton Arboretum.