Visit Chicago

The Loop, the business district, takes its name from the loop the elevated train tracks form above the streets. It holds Millennium Park and its Cloud Gate, the mirror sculpture nicknamed the Bean, the Art Institute with one of the richest Impressionist collections outside France (allow 2 hrs, about 32 dollars), and the Chicago Cultural Center with the largest Tiffany glass dome in the world, free to enter. The theatre district, around State Street, comes alive in the evening.

The river crosses downtown from east to west and offers the best view on a century and a half of building: the 1888 Rookery, the white Wrigley Building, the corn-cob towers of Marina City, the Willis Tower and its glass-ledge Skydeck at 412 metres. Architecture cruises, April to November, last 90 minutes; the Chicago Architecture Center's is the benchmark. Along the bank, the Riverwalk lines up bars and docks for 2 kilometres.

The Lakefront Trail runs along Lake Michigan for about thirty kilometres, fully pedestrianised and cyclable, with not a single expressway on the water's edge. South of downtown, the Museum Campus brings together the Field Museum of natural history, the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium, with the finest skyline view from the point. Navy Pier juts 900 metres into the lake, with its Ferris wheel. In summer, urban beaches like North Avenue are lifeguarded.

North of downtown, Lincoln Park unrolls its huge park, a free zoo and a botanical conservatory along the lake. Further west, Wicker Park and Bucktown concentrate thrift stores, record shops and cafes, linked by the 606, a former elevated rail line turned into a 4-kilometre trail. Wrigleyville is built around Wrigley Field, the Cubs' ballpark opened in 1914, which can be toured on non-match days.

Hyde Park, 20 minutes by train from downtown, carries the neo-Gothic campus of the University of Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House and the future Obama Presidential Center. Bronzeville was the heart of the Great Migration and of Chicago jazz in the 1920s. Pilsen, the Mexican quarter around 18th Street, lines up murals, panaderias and the free National Museum of Mexican Art. These neighborhoods are visited by day and knowing your route.

Oak Park, 25 minutes on the green L line, holds Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio and the world's highest concentration of prairie-style houses, plus Hemingway's birthplace. The Indiana Dunes, dunes and beaches on the Indiana side of the lake, are an hour away on the South Shore train. Boston, two hours by plane, offers a sharp contrast: older, more compact, turned toward the Atlantic rather than an inland lake, but reached from the same United States.