Seattle's culture runs deeper than its tech skyline suggests: a Japanese-influenced Art Deco museum in Volunteer Park, one of America's finest concert halls, murals in Georgetown alleys and a world-class glass art tradition born in Tacoma studios.
Carl Gould's 1933 Art Deco building holds SAM's Asian collection — Japanese screens, Chinese jades, Korean ceramics. Open Fri–Sun 10:00–17:00, so plan around it. Two camels by Alice Kwan guard the entrance.
OMA and Rem Koolhaas's 2004 glass-and-steel diamond lattice, with the four-storey Books Spiral running continuously through the Dewey system and an acid-chartreuse escalator level. Free self-guided audio tour.
SAM's nine-acre free outdoor gallery on a reclaimed industrial waterfront, with Richard Serra's Wake, Alexander Calder's red Eagle and Louise Bourgeois's Father and Son fountain, all set against Puget Sound.
Seattle's oldest neighbourhood, rebuilt in Richardsonian Romanesque brick after the 1889 fire, holds Greg Kucera Gallery, Foster/White and Davidson Galleries within a few blocks of red-brick storefronts.
Behind Jonathan Borofsky's 15-metre Hammering Man, SAM's downtown home spans Northwest Coast Native art, Australian Aboriginal painting and European masters across Robert Venturi's 1991 building.
The 2,479-seat S. Mark Taper Auditorium floats on 310 rubber-and-steel pads to isolate it from bus tunnel rumble. The lobby holds two Dale Chihuly chandeliers in Persian and Crystal forms.
The Rep stages new American work at the Bagley Wright Theatre; next door McCaw Hall houses Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Opera behind a shimmering scrim wall lit at dusk.
A two-level supper club running since 1980, booking touring names like Pat Metheny and Dianne Reeves in a room where every table faces the stage and the kitchen serves through the first set.
Eight galleries of Dale Chihuly's blown glass — Sealife Room, Persian Ceiling, the 30-metre Glasshouse sculpture in amber and red — plus a garden where forms grow among Northwest planting.
Housed in the restored 1909 Colman School, occupied by activists for eight years in the 1980s, the museum documents Black migration to the Northwest and hosts rotating Pacific Northwest artist shows.
The only US museum in a National Historic Landmark, the 1910 East Kong Yick Building. Guided tours enter preserved hotel rooms and a family association hall — the sole way to see the historic floors.
Seattle's oldest neighbourhood turned industrial arts quarter: vintage trailers converted into shops, the Equinox Studios workshops and Airport Way South walls covered in commissioned murals and paste-ups.