Chicago Attractions

• Adler Planetarium
  1300 South Lake Shore Drive.
  Opened in 1930 as the first planetarium in the western hemisphere, additions to the Adler within the past decade include a theater and restaurant.
• Amoco Building
  200 East Randolph Street.
  Formerly known as the Standard Oil Building, the Amoco Building stands as the city’s second tallest structure after the Sears Tower and is most effectively viewed from a distance.
• Art Institute of Chicago
  South Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.
  Here you’ll find Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Picasso’s The Old Guitarist and a spectacular collection of Impressionist and post Impressionist works by Monet, Renoir, and Gaugin among other celebrated artists.
• Chicago Board of Trade
  141 West Jackson Street.
  Don’t miss the gilded statue of Ceres, Roman goddess of agriculture, atop this Art Deco building at the foot of LaSalle Street designed in 1930 by Holabird and Root. Unfolding within is frenetic pit trading for corn, wheat, soybeans, oil, government bonds, and more.
• Chicago Children’s Museum
  Navy Pier, 700 Grand Avenue.
  At this 57,000 square-foot facility, you will find a kid-sized neighborhood complete with a bakery, service station, and construction site, plus science exhibits on topics such as inventing, and a whole lot more.
• Field Museum
  Lake Shore Drive and East Roosevelt Road.
  Explore cultures and environments from around the world within six acres of exhibits at this world-class facility originally funded by retailer Marshall Field.
• The Loop
  Known as the Loop since cable car days of the late 1800s, Chicago’s downtown serves as a vibrant architectural museum where you can wander past modern towers adjacent to 19th century structures, shop at huge department stores surviving the malling of America, and visit world-renowned museums. Noisily looping the loop overhead, you will encounter the train called the El.
• Magnificent Mile
  Magnificent Mile, a stretch of Michigan Avenue between the Chicago River and Oak Street, is so named because of upscale shops lining the street. Anchoring the south end is the illuminated Wrigley Building, headquarters for the chewing gum enterprise. To the east, you will find affluent Streeterville, once a landfill run by the notorious Cap Streeter. Cap’s shanty has been replaced by the towering John Hancock Center.
• Marshall Field’s
  111 North State Street.
  Beckoning shoppers are more than 500 departments at the original site of Chicago’s famed department store chain. The huge emporium, designed by D.H. Burnham & Company and built between 1892 and 1907, has an eye-popping Tiffany dome in the southwest corner near State and Washington streets. There is also a landmark clock outside the entrance at State and Randolph streets.
• Merchandise Mart
  With more square footage (4.2 million) than any building in the nation except the Pentagon, this mart owned by the famed Kennedy family has more than 600 permanent wholesale showrooms. Tours are available.
• Museum of Science and Industry
  5700 South Lake Shore Drive.
  At this sprawling exhibit powerhouse, you can walk through a replica of a human heart, explore a WWII German submarine or sample perfect acoustics at the Whispering Gallery. The museum also has the world’s first permanent exhibit on AIDS and HIV.
• Sears Tower
  233 South Wacker Drive.
  Once the world’s tallest building (now edged out by another in Malaysia), the 110-story Sears Tower continues to impress with its steel frame covered in black aluminum and bronze-tinted glass. On clear days, you can see Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin from the 103rd floor Skydeck open 365 days.
• Shedd Aquarium
  1200 South Lake Shore Drive.
  John G. Shedd Aquarium, the world’s largest, boasts underwater viewing areas for dolphins and whales along with exhibits for river otters, electric eels, piranhas, and scores of other aquatic wonders.
• Tribune Tower
  Home of the Chicago Tribune, Tribune Tower’s exterior walls are embedded with pieces of famed buildings far from the Windy City, including authentic stones from Westminster Abbey, the Alamo, Hamlet’s Castle, the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, Fort Sumter and the Arc de Triomphe.