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Millennium Park & Grant Park

Chicago’s Front Yard

29stops
2.7miles
1h 54mwalking
Freein the app

Chicago calls Grant Park its front yard, and it took a fight to keep it open. When the town was laid out, the land east of Michigan Avenue was promised to stay free of buildings forever, and the city has been arguing about that promise ever since. Its northern corner was rail yards and parking lots until the late 1990s. Then the city roofed over the tracks and built Millennium Park on top, with gardens, a concert lawn and some of the most photographed art in America. This walk takes you from Frank Gehry’s bandshell and the Bean past the lions of the Art Institute and the old hotels of Michigan Avenue to Buckingham Fountain and the lake. In summer you will often walk straight into a free concert.

Nearest 'L' station
Washington/Wabash BrownGreenOrangePinkPurple · 4 min walk to the start
Map of the Millennium Park & Grant Park walking route with its 29 stops
The route of the Millennium Park & Grant Park walk. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The 29 stops

The full stories, photos and directions for every stop are in the app.

  1. 1Wildberry Pancakes & Cafe

    Start the way plenty of Chicagoans start a Saturday: with pancakes.

  2. 2Giordano’s 🍕

    Chicago deep dish comes in two styles, and Giordano’s makes the taller one: stuffed pizza, a deep crust filled with cheese, closed with a second thin layer of dough and topped with tomato sauce.

  3. 3Millennium Monument

    Begin under the ring of columns on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, a near full-size copy of a peristyle that stood here from 1917 to 1953.

  4. 4Jay Pritzker Pavilion

    Frank Gehry’s bandshell looks as if a giant crumpled sheets of steel and tossed them onto the lawn.

  5. 5BP Bridge

    This stainless steel bridge snakes across Columbus Drive like a frozen river, and it was the first bridge Frank Gehry ever completed.

  6. 6Maggie Daley Park

    On this side of the bridge, Chicago’s children take over.

  7. 7Aqua

    Look north across Randolph Street at the tower whose balconies ripple like water.

  8. 8Nichols Bridgeway

    Overhead, a thin white bridge floats across Monroe Street.

  9. 9Lurie Garden

    Step through the tall hedge and the city noise drops away.

  10. 10Crown Fountain

    Two 50-foot glass towers face each other across a shallow black pool, and on each one a giant face blinks, smiles and then purses its lips.

  11. 11Cloud Gate

    Officially it is called Cloud Gate.

  12. 12Chicago Athletic Association

    Across Michigan Avenue stands a Venetian palace built in 1893 for a gentlemen’s sports club.

  13. 13Cindy’s

    Take the elevator to the 13th floor of the Athletic Association for Cindy’s, a rooftop restaurant and bar with a terrace looking straight out over Millennium Park and the lake.

  14. 14Shake Shack

    A burger stand from New York, inside a Chicago landmark.

  15. 15The Gage

    A long wooden bar and tall windows right across from the park make The Gage an easy lunch stop halfway through the walk.

  16. 16Russian Tea Time

    Since 1993 this has been the place for afternoon tea, Russian style, a few steps from the Art Institute.

  17. 17Art Institute of Chicago 🎟

    The two bronze lions on the steps have guarded the Art Institute since 1893, and they have no names.

  18. 18Fountain of the Great Lakes

    Tucked into the garden on the south side of the museum, five bronze women pour water from shell to shell.

  19. 19Symphony Center

    Across Michigan Avenue stands the home of one of the world’s great orchestras.

  20. 20Michigan Avenue Streetwall

    Look along Michigan Avenue at the long, unbroken row of buildings facing the park.

  21. 21Fine Arts Building

    Wander in, and you may hear someone practicing scales behind a door.

  22. 22Auditorium Theatre

    When it opened in 1889, the Auditorium was the most ambitious building in Chicago: a huge theater wrapped in a hotel and offices, designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, with a young Frank Lloyd Wright among the draftsmen.

  23. 23Cafecito

    A small Cuban café that does one thing very well: pressed sandwiches on crispy bread.

  24. 24Congress Plaza Hotel

    The big hotel across Ida B. Wells Drive, the old Congress Parkway, with its name in red letters on the roof, opened in the 1890s for visitors to the World's Fair, and it has a reputation as the most haunted hotel in Chicago.

  25. 25The Bowman and the Spearman

    Two bronze horsemen guard the entrance to Grant Park, one drawing a bow, the other about to throw a spear.

  26. 26Grant Park

    Everything between Michigan Avenue and the lake is Grant Park, and it's empty because one stubborn man went to court.

  27. 27Buckingham Fountain

    If it looks familiar, you may have seen it in the opening credits of Married...

  28. 28Hutchinson Field

    The big lawn south of the fountain has seen two of Chicago's largest crowds.

  29. 29Queen’s Landing

    Cross Lake Shore Drive at the light and walk to the water’s edge.

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Millennium Park & Grant Park · Coming soon to the appAll Chicago walks