Shedd Aquarium

The Shedd Aquarium sits on Lake Michigan's shore and houses 32,000 animals — which makes it one of the largest indoor aquariums in the world and creates the slightly surreal experience of watching beluga whales swim with the Chicago skyline visible through the windows behind them. Opened in 1930 as a gift from John G. Shedd (a Marshall Field's executive), it was the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater collection.

The original 1930 building is Beaux-Arts marble and bronze, designed to look like a Greek temple dedicated to the sea. The central rotunda, with its carved fish friezes and ceiling decorated with nautical symbols, is one of the most beautiful interior spaces in Chicago — you walk in expecting fish tanks and find yourself in an architectural monument. The Caribbean Reef exhibit, a 90,000-gallon circular tank in the centre of the rotunda, features a diver feeding sharks and sea turtles several times daily.

The Oceanarium — a 1991 addition with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake — is home to Pacific white-sided dolphins, sea otters, and the belugas that have become the aquarium's stars. The Abbott Oceanarium blurs the line between the tanks and the lake outside, creating a visual effect where dolphins appear to be swimming in Lake Michigan. The aquarium is one of three institutions on the Museum Campus (with the Field Museum and Adler Planetarium), and the walk along the lakefront between them, with the skyline rising to the north, is one of Chicago's great promenades.