Art Institute of Chicago – Art Institute of Chicago is one of the world's top museums. It has a collection that spans 5000 years of art - its impressionist and postimpressionist collection is second only to France's. Excellent maps are available free at the information booths. The bronze lions flanking the steps are Chicago icons.

Chicago Cultural Center – Chicago Cultural Center can be located a few blocks north of the Art Institute. It often funds free music concerts. The Center has beautiful Galleries, exhibitions, gorgeous interior design and a permanent museum.

Chicago Historical Society - The Lincolns, Capones, Daleys and other notables are here, but the focus of this well-funded museum (located in the lower end of Lincoln Park, south of the zoo) is on the average person. The role of the commoner in the American Revolution sets the tone for the humanistic exhibits.

One, titled Fort Dearborn and Frontier Chicago, shows how settlers and Indians changed each other's lives. The Pioneer Court gives hands-on demonstrations in the intricacies of making candles, weaving blankets and knitting clothes. None of the work was easy.

Much of the 2nd floor is devoted to Chicago's development and history. The roles of immigration and industry are addressed, as are the problems of slums and the lives of the rich.

Lincoln Park – Chicago's most popular park is always crowded day and night with people in-line skating, walking dogs, pushing strollers and driving in circles for hours looking for a place to park. It's also home to the Biographic Theater, where gangster John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI in 1934.

The free Lincoln Park Zoo, founded in 1868, enjoys considerable community support. Among the highlights are huge monitor lizards, Galαpagos turtles, naked mole rats, fruit bats and spiders. The zoo has been a world leader in gorilla breeding, with more than three dozen born here since 1970. One may have a chance to watch the chimpanzees drawing on poster board with crayons. Some of their works have been shown in galleries. Lincoln Park borders Lake Michigan northeast of the downtown Loop.

Magnificent Mile – The Magnificent Mile lies northeast of the Loop. Michigan Avenue runs from the Chicago River north to Lincoln Park. 'Mag Mile', as it's widely known, is a shopper's paradise: One can find everything from the swankiest upscale boutiques to chainstores. Its most famous landmark is the Tribune Tower, a 1925 gothic masterpiece that's home to the Pulitzer-prize winning Chicago Tribune. Eccentric owner Col Robert McCormick had his overworked reporters send rocks from famous buildings and monuments around the world and then embedded them around the base of the building. Navy Pier – It started as a wharf, morphed into a University, and ended up as a dead 800-pound gorilla: huge, difficult to dispose of and a little on the nose. In the late 1980s the pier got a serious facelift, and is now more than half a mile of tourist-bait in the form of amusement parks, meeting centres and food courts.

Shedd Aquarium – The world's largest assortment of finned, gilled and other aquatic creatures swim within the marble-clad confines of the Shedd Aquarium. The original 1929 building houses 200 tanks. The attached multilevel Oceanarium is a spectacular space where huge mammal pools seem to blend into the lake outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The centrally located tank is home to 500 tropical fish from placid nurse sharks to less neighbourly moray eels. Also on hand are beluga whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins, harbour seals, sea otters and penguins.

Wrigley Field – Seventh inning stretch and the crowd belts out a beer-soaked version of 'Take me out to the Ballgame.' There's only one place in the world you could be - Wrigley Field. Home to the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field draws tourists year-round who pose under the classic neon sign over the main entrance to the baseball shrine.

This ivy-covered stadium, one of the oldest in America, is described by some as being as 'big as a pillbox'. It's an old fashioned ballpark, where the scoreboard is still changed by hand and where fans fought tooth and nail to prevent the stadium being kitted out with lights. Players take fans on tours of the stadium several times during the season.

Chess Records/Willie Dixon's Blues Heaven – Chess records was the recording studio where, in the 1950s and 60s, artists such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones made some of their best music. Today it's a blues museum, and, in summer, blues acts perform outside.

Hyde Park – Hyde Park is an enclave within the city. The major attraction of Hyde Park is the Museum of Science and Industry, which is dedicated to high-tech gadgets but also features some bizarre body exhibits.

Much of Hyde Park’s existence is owed to the University of Chicago, a school where graduate students outnumber undergrads and 22 Nobel prizes for economics have sat on the trophy shelf since the award was first presented in 1969.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore – Indiana Dunes are over 32km (20mi) of sandy beaches and dunes formed by the prevailing winds on Lake Michigan.

Oak Park – Oak Park is birth place of Ernest Hemingway. It is an affluent suburb of Chicago that has been preserved as a National Historic District. A young architect named Frank Lloyd Wright came here in 1889 to set up a practice and experiment with building styles.

The Ernest Hemingway Museum is collection of most of the Hemingway memorabilia. The Unity Temple, built in 1904, was Wright's first attempt at poured-concrete construction and one of his most famous works. Oak Park is 15km (9mi) west of Chicago's Loop.

Spertus Museum – Spertus Museum is an excellent small museum devoted to 5000 years of Jewish faith and culture, the Spertus Museum juxtaposes aspects of Jewish life and religion.