St. Louis

St. Louis first announces itself at the Mississippi. Eero Saarinen’s stainless-steel Gateway Arch and the surrounding national park hold the riverfront together as both a civic landmark and a place to examine the complex history of westward expansion. Farther north, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge carries a different movement story: a former Route 66 crossing whose distinctive bend still spans Missouri and Illinois for pedestrians and cyclists. The city’s cultural identity is distributed well beyond those gateways. Downtown, the National Blues Museum traces the blues as a foundational American art form, while City Museum transforms a former shoe factory into an artist-built environment of salvaged architecture and participatory sculpture. Forest Park’s Saint Louis Art Museum places a broad international collection inside the Palace of Fine Arts created for the 1904 World’s Fair. The Cathedral Basilica adds a monumental interior defined by an immense ensemble of mosaic art, and the Missouri Botanical Garden pairs historic landscapes with conservatory and Japanese garden collections. In Soulard, the historic Anheuser-Busch brewing campus remains an operating industrial site as well as a visitor destination. The neighborhood also anchors the city’s dated Mardi Gras season, but the event is one expression of a year-round destination built from river geography, civic institutions, music and neighborhood character.