Overview
Chicago is America's architectural masterpiece on the shore of Lake Michigan — the city that invented the skyscraper, anchored by world-class museums, a spectacular lakefront, and a neighborhood culture that runs from blues clubs to Michelin tables.
Travel
Chicago is the most rewarding architecture city in the United States and one of the most underrated big cities in the world for a visit. After the Great Fire of 1871 cleared the centre, the city rebuilt itself as a laboratory for modern building — the first steel-framed skyscraper went up here, and the line runs unbroken through Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and the supertall towers of today. You read that story best from the Chicago River, on an architecture boat tour that remains the single finest introduction to any American city. Above the river, the Loop's elevated trains rattle around the business core; east of it, Grant and Millennium Parks open onto the lake with Cloud Gate (the “Bean”), the Pritzker Pavilion and the Art Institute, whose collection of Impressionist and American painting is among the world's greatest. The lakefront itself is Chicago's defining feature — eighteen continuous miles of public beach, bike path and park where the city meets an inland sea. Beyond downtown the city is a federation of neighbourhoods: blues and gospel on the South and West Sides, Mexican Pilsen, Polish and Ukrainian enclaves, the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park along the lake, Wicker Park's music and dining. Eating is serious and unpretentious. And the seasons matter more here than in most American cities: winters are famously hard, summers are glorious, and the run of largely free festivals along the lake from June to September is Chicago at its absolute best.
Chicago is where the skyscraper was born, and architecture is the reason to come. The classic first move is an architecture river cruise — ninety minutes along the three branches of the Chicago River, narrated by guides who can read a century and a half of building from the water: the terracotta Wrigley Building and Gothic Tribune Tower, Mies van der Rohe's glass boxes, Marina City's “corncobs”, and the black tapered shaft of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, whose glass-floored Skydeck ledges out 1,353 feet above the Loop. On foot, the Loop itself is an open-air museum: Sullivan's ornamented Carson Pirie Scott store, the Rookery with Frank Lloyd Wright's light-filled lobby, the Chicago Cultural Center's Tiffany dome. The Chicago Architecture Center runs the definitive walking tours. For Wright specifically, the suburb of Oak Park holds his home, studio and the Unity Temple within an easy ride on the Green Line.
Frequently asked questions
Tourism & destination guides
Culture & festivals
The non-profit behind the city's definitive architecture river cruises and walking tours, plus exhibitions on how Chicago built the skyscraper.
Official site of one of the world's great museums on Michigan Avenue — tickets, hours and the Impressionist and American collections.
Diplomatic missions in Chicago
10 embassies based in this city, grouped by region.
This overview comes from Visaja's worldwide missions database (visaja.com), checked against official government sources; for binding answers, the mission itself always has the final word.