The Loop & Near North

Chicago’s beating heart: commerce, architecture and tourists

Talk of the town: Near North locals have renamed the streets around the Gold Coast “the Viagra triangle” after the rich older men and younger, dolled-up ladies out on the prowl.
Named after the cable-car system that preceded the current elevated train that circles the district, Chicago’s downtown and financial center has the most impressive 19th- and 20th-century skyline in America. Here you’ll find the theater district, Lyric Opera, Joffrey Ballet, Art Institute of Chicago and Museum Park, and several public artworks, including a Picasso outside the Daley Center. Millennium Park is humming in summertime – don’t miss the surreal reflected views of the skyline in Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture, known as “the Bean”.

Just across the Chicago River, Near North is packed with restaurants, galleries, bars and nightclubs around Rush Street. Sate any urge to splurge by shopping on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile, which runs north to the Gold Coast, Chicago’s most bijou neighbourhood. Here you’ll find designer shopping on Oak Street, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oak Street and Milton Olive beaches, and the best view in the city: 96 stories up at the John Hancock Observatory.