Chicago Cultural Center

The Chicago Cultural Center is a building that would be a museum in any other city but in Chicago is just... a free public building that happens to contain the world's largest Tiffany stained-glass dome. The Preston Bradley Hall dome, 38 feet in diameter and made of approximately 30,000 pieces of Tiffany glass, sits above a room that hosts free concerts, lectures, and exhibitions and is open to anyone who walks in off the street.

The building was originally the Chicago Public Library, opened in 1897 in a Beaux-Arts design by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge that was intended to rival any cultural institution in Europe. The exterior is white marble and limestone. The interior is Carrara marble, polished brass, mosaics, and mother-of-pearl inlay — the kind of extravagance that only makes sense when you remember that 1890s Chicago was trying to prove it wasn't just a meatpacking town.

There's a second Tiffany dome in the GAR Hall on the south side of the building — smaller but equally beautiful — and the building hosts over 1,000 free public programs a year, from jazz concerts to art exhibitions to film screenings. The visitor information center on the ground floor is staffed by people who know the city intimately and is the best first stop in Chicago for anyone who doesn't want to rely on a guidebook. Free, beautiful, and useful — the Cultural Center is Chicago's quiet overachiever.