Chicago

A hundred and sixty-eight stainless plates were welded together and the seams ground away. The underside is hollowed, and standing beneath it stretches your face into repeating layers. Hands keep the lower half clouded, so only the top holds a clean sky.

Glass boxes push out from the wall of the 103rd floor with the floor made of glass as well. They were bolted on in 2009, and the road is directly beneath your shoes. The tower moves a little in wind, and standing inside one of the boxes is where you feel it.

The two bronze lions have flanked the steps since 1894 and stand in different postures. Inside, Seurat's large canvas of dots takes a room to itself. Hopper's painting of a night diner hangs on the same floor, and many people come for the pair together.

The river used to empty into the lake until a canal dug in 1900 turned its direction around. The boat follows that reversed course and looks up at the buildings from below. The bridges lift from the middle, so road traffic stops each time a boat comes through.

The train threads between downtown buildings and passes close enough to brush office windows. Wheels shriek on the curves, and a conversation on the pavement underneath stops while a train goes over.

Frank Lloyd Wright finished this house in 1910 with roofs that reach well past the walls. The overhang was measured to block the high summer sun and let the low winter sun in. Lead patterns in the window glass keep the interior obscured without any curtains.

Built as the public library in 1897, its stairs and walls are covered in mosaic. A dome of some thirty thousand pieces of coloured glass caps the third-floor reading room, and there are always a few people in the chairs beneath it looking up.

The path runs close to thirty kilometres along the shore, and since 2018 the bike lane and the walking lane have been separated. The downtown stretch is too crowded for speed, so riding properly means heading north or south out of it.

A single limestone arch stands alone where the road runs past. It was the entrance for the years this city butchered meat for the country, and when the yards closed in 1971 only the gate was left.

One of the most complete Tyrannosaurus skeletons ever dug up stands here. It came out of South Dakota in 1990 and was bought at auction in 1997. In 2018 it moved upstairs into its own room, and a cast of a long-necked plant eater took the ground-floor hall.

Built in 1916, the pier reaches nearly 1 km out into Lake Michigan. From the big wheel near its tip you face the downtown towers from the lake side. Summer brings fireworks launched above the lake.

A ballpark from 1914 whose outfield walls are covered in ivy. The scoreboard is still worked by hand, with number plates slotted in, and the rooftops of houses across the street carry stands of their own.

A science museum in the fine arts palace built for Chicago's 1893 World's Fair. The German submarine U-505, captured at sea by the US Navy in 1944, sits whole in an underground hall, and a mine-shaft lift takes you down into a recreated coal seam.

Opened in 1930 on the same lakeside museum campus as the Field Museum. The oceanarium where belugas and dolphins live was built with glass walls facing Lake Michigan, so the pools appear to run straight into the lake.

Founded in 1868, it still takes no admission fee. Set in a park ringed by apartment towers, it shows city buildings beyond the lion enclosure, and on winter evenings a light festival strings the grounds with countless bulbs.

A great glasshouse from 1908 that lets visitors in without charge. The Fern Room, laid out by landscape designer Jens Jensen, recreates Chicago in its swampland days, and a Green Line station stands right at the door.