Things to do in Pittsburgh

Landmark · Mount Washington / South Shore

An 1877 funicular still running on its original wooden cable cars, hauling you up a 400-foot cliff to the overlook where the three rivers meet — the view that appears on every photograph of the city.

Local tip: It takes a regional transit fare card, so if you have one it costs the same as a bus ride. Go at dusk, and take the Monongahela Incline back down instead — it lands you next to Station Square and the T.

Food · North of downtown, along Penn and Smallman

A half-mile of wholesale food warehouses turned into the city's market street — Wholey's fish, Pennsylvania Macaroni Company's cheese counter, Enrico Biscotti, and a Saturday morning crush that is the closest thing Pittsburgh has to a civic ritual.

Local tip: Go before ten on a Saturday or the parking is hopeless. Penn Mac's counter staff will cut you a taste of anything; the Sunday-morning version is quieter and most of the food shops are still open.

Neighborhood · North-east along the Allegheny

A former mill neighbourhood strung along Butler Street that turned into the city's densest run of independent restaurants, bars and design shops without losing the row houses or the older residents.

Local tip: It runs three miles and the character changes every few blocks — Lower Lawrenceville is the busy end, Upper is quieter and cheaper. Allegheny Cemetery in the middle is a genuine 300-acre park that almost nobody treats as one.

Nature · East End, between Squirrel Hill and Regent Square

The city's largest park at around 644 acres, a wooded ravine system rather than a lawn, with a restored stream at Nine Mile Run that was an industrial slag dump within living memory.

Local tip: The trails connect to the Great Allegheny Passage, so you can ride from here to Washington DC on a rail trail without touching a road. The Frick Environmental Center at the Beechwood entrance is free and worth the detour.

Culture · Oakland

The Carnegie Museum of Art and Museum of Natural History share one building — dinosaurs downstairs, a serious collection upstairs — and a few hundred metres away the Cathedral of Learning is a 42-storey Gothic university tower with 31 Nationality Rooms, each fitted out by a different immigrant community.

Local tip: The Nationality Rooms are working classrooms, so they are open to visitors only when not in use; the Christmas season is when they are all decorated and the queue is worth it. The museums are one ticket for both.

Nature · South Side Slopes

Pittsburgh has more public stairways than any other American city — roughly 800 sets of city steps that are legally streets, built so mill workers could get from hillside houses down to the river. The Slopes carry the densest concentration.

Local tip: The annual StepTrek walk in autumn is the easy way in, but any Sunday morning works: start at 18th Street and climb. Bring proper shoes and check the city's 311 map for closed flights — some are genuinely derelict.