A hotbed of architectural greats, eco-friendly and sustainable, a music icon and an artistic hub, the city is also the start of the legendary Route 66.
Chicago ‘s skyscrapers rise up forcefully, bearing the signatures of star architects such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright , Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas . The Second City, they call it here, referring to its rebirth after the devastating fire of 1871 that completely destroyed it. It touched the sky, in 1885, with the Home Insurance Building, the first skyscraper in the world in glass, steel and concrete, designed by William Le Baron Jenney that would change the history of urban architecture in large metropolises. Sailing along the river of the same name, the view of the most beautiful skyscrapers opens up as if by magic. Once past the Willis Tower, from whose Skydeck, about 400 m above the ground, you can observe the city on all-glass balconies suspended in the void, here rises the Merchandise Mart, with its unmistakable Art Deco style, until it reaches the One Illinois Center or 111 East Wacker, one of the last projects by Mies van der Rohe, and the brand new St. Regis , a 101-story building containing the hotel of the same name and private residences, designed by Jeanne Gang. For Frank Lloyd Wright fans and Prairie School aficionados, Oak Park, just minutes from downtown Chicago, is home to the world’s largest collection of Wright-designed structures inspired by the Midwestern landscape, including the Robie House, which the American Institute of Architects named one of the 10 most significant structures of the 20th century, and the Unity Temple, a Unitarian Universalist church sanctuary that stands out as a massive, monolithic concrete cube topped by a broad, flat roof .
Green City: Millennium Park, a 10-hectare public park, incorporates revolutionary advances in sustainable design, including one of the world’s largest green roofs. Built over an active network of railway lines and parking lots and opened in 2004, it contains true icons such as Cloud Gate, aka The Bean, the bean by British sculptor Anish Kappoor , whose surface, inspired by liquid mercury, reflects the skyline. Nearby is the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the auditorium designed by Frank Gehry, the epicentre of the cultural and artistic scene, especially in the summer, while, a little further on, the water jets of Jaume Plensa ‘s Crown Fountain gush from two 15-metre towers covered with LED screens that project the faces of ordinary people. The Lurie Garden , designed by Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf, is a tribute to the Illinois prairies, cultivated strictly without the use of chemicals.
Once a desolate and swampy land inhabited by the Algonquin Indians, who named it Chigagou, field of wild garlic, then by French settlers, gangsters, Mexican, Italian and even Polish immigrants, the city changed in 1900, when, to solve various pollution problems, the course of the Chicago River, which flowed into Lake Michigan, was reversed to connect it to the Illinois River heading into the Mississippi.
The notes of the blues resonate everywhere in the Windy City. They are the emblem of the suffering and hope of black people. The area of South Michigan Avenue is the place where the most influential recording studios once stood, such as the legendary Chess, where the Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry also passed through, whose Maybellene can be considered in all respects the first rock and roll song in history. Or Vee-Jay Records, which, in 1964, launched the Beatles in the United States. In the shadow of the Trump Tower and the Chicago Tribune , the Magnificent Mile, which includes Michigan Avenue, has been the place of choice, since the 1940s, to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the Chicago Style, or rather the Chicago Blues. Among the many, the Kingstone Mines, the oldest blues club in the city, has seen Koko Taylor, Sugar Blue and Billy Branch perform, while the House of Blues is the club where the Blues Brothers also recorded an album. Not to be missed, in the Uptown neighborhood, the former speakeasy Green Mill, favorite bar of Al Capone and his gang, who even had a reserved table a stone’s throw from a secret tunnel from which to escape. Some cult scenes from «The Untouchables» and «Ocean’s Twelve» were also filmed here. You have to move to Daley Plaza to admire the Chicago Picasso, an untitled sculpture, donated by the precursor of cubism to the city that also serves as the backdrop to fragments of the films The Blues Brothers and The Fugitive.
Downtown Chicago is all enclosed in The Loop , which takes its name from the railway line that draws a perfect perimeter of the neighborhood, before venturing towards the suburbs. Traditionally the business district par excellence, over the last 50 years, and even more so post-pandemic, it has given itself a makeover, collecting new apartment complexes overlooking the river or Lake Michigan, luxury boutiques, trendy clubs and big names such as Boeing, McDonald’s and Google (which opened a headquarters in 2015). The new face of The Loop is certainly represented by the Pendry Chicago hotel recently opened inside the 1929 Art Deco Carbide & Carbon building, with its unusual champagne bottle shape. The Art Institute, inside an elegant neoclassical building to which a new wing designed by Renzo Piano was added in 2009. Inside is the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art outside of Europe, along with unusual medieval relics and works of landscape architecture, engineering and industrial design, including pieces by Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Art on the MART is an art project projected onto the river-view façade of the Merchandise Mart. This season, 34 projectors will bring to life a performance by New York artist Derrick Adams. A few steps away is the 6-story sign of the Chicago Theater, an undisputed icon of The Wind City since 1921, whose Arc de Triomphe-like façade and lobby inspired by the Chapel of Versailles have been the backdrop for artists such as Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra.