Things to do in St. Louis

Nature · Central West End / Dogtown

1,300 acres — larger than Central Park — laid out for the 1904 World's Fair, holding the art museum, the zoo, the science centre and the history museum, all of them free to enter.

Local tip: Four major museums with no admission charge is genuinely unusual in the United States and it is paid for by a dedicated regional tax district. The Saint Louis Zoo and the Art Museum are both free every day; only special exhibitions charge.

Landmark · Riverfront, downtown

Eero Saarinen's 630-foot stainless steel catenary curve, the tallest monument in the United States, with a tram of tiny pod cars that climbs inside the legs to a viewing slot at the top.

Local tip: Book the tram in advance — it sells out, the pods are genuinely small, and there is no other way up. The museum underneath was rebuilt in 2018 and is far better than the Arch's reputation suggests.

Culture · Downtown west

A ten-storey former shoe warehouse rebuilt by a sculptor into a climbable structure of salvaged bridges, aeroplanes, caves and a rooftop Ferris wheel. There is nothing else like it anywhere.

Local tip: Go on a weekday evening when the school groups have gone; it stays open late on Fridays and Saturdays and is genuinely better for adults after dark. Wear long sleeves and shoes you can climb in — you will be crawling through steel tunnels.

Nature · South city

A Victorian walking park of ruins and painted pavilions, adjoining the oldest continuously operating botanical garden in the United States, founded 1859, with the geodesic Climatron glasshouse at its centre.

Local tip: The Tower Grove farmers market on Saturday mornings is the best in the city and the surrounding neighbourhood — Bosnian, Vietnamese and Ethiopian along South Grand — is where you should eat afterwards.

Food · South-west of downtown

A compact Italian neighbourhood that is still actually Italian — bakeries, groceries, red-sauce restaurants, and fire hydrants painted in the tricolore.

Local tip: The unglamorous places are the good ones. Buy provel and salsiccia from a corner grocer rather than eating at the restaurant with the largest sign, and walk past 5447 Elizabeth Avenue, where Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up opposite each other.

Landmark · Collinsville, Illinois — 20 minutes east across the river

A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico, with Monks Mound — a hundred-foot earthwork with a larger base than the Great Pyramid.

Local tip: Almost no visitor to St. Louis goes, and most residents have been once as a schoolchild. Climb Monks Mound at sunset with the Arch on the horizon; it reframes the whole region as a place that has been a metropolis before.