St. Louis is the independent city and largest metropolitan area in Missouri (population 2.8 million metro) — the "Gateway to the West" built at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the jumping-off point for the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) and the California, Santa Fe and Oregon Trails that carried 300,000 settlers west across the continent in the 1840s-1860s. The city was founded in 1764 by French fur traders (Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau) as a trading post on the Mississippi, named after King Louis IX of France, and remained French until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 transferred 2.14 million km² of territory from Napoleon to the United States for $15 million ($0.03/acre) — the single largest territorial transaction in the history of the modern world. The Gateway Arch (the 630-foot (192 m) stainless steel catenary arch on the Mississippi riverfront, designed by the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen in 1947, built 1963-1965 — the tallest arch in the world and the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere; the tram inside the arch carries visitors to the observation room at the apex in a 4-minute ascent), Forest Park (one of the largest urban parks in the United States, 500 acres larger than Central Park in New York — used for the 1904 World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition); contains 5 free museums), the St. Louis Zoo (one of the oldest zoos in the US, free entry — the only major zoo in America that charges no admission), and the Missouri Botanical Garden (the oldest continuously operating botanical garden in the US, 1859) are the major attractions. St. Louis has a distinctive food culture: toasted ravioli (a St. Louis invention — breaded, deep-fried ravioli served with marinara sauce, invented at a pasta restaurant in the Hill Italian neighbourhood in the 1940s), provel cheese pizza (the distinctively St. Louis pizza with the processed provel cheese blend unique to the city), and gooey butter cake (a 1930s Depression-era bakery accident (a baker used the wrong proportions for a coffee cake batter) that became the definitive St. Louis sweet).
The Gateway Arch (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial — the 192 m stainless steel catenary arch on the Mississippi riverfront; designed by Eero Saarinen (1947; his winning entry in the national monument design competition; Saarinen died in 1961 before construction was complete); the tram system inside the arch (the unique "pod" tram (each of 8 pods carries 5 people; the pod rotates to remain level as the tram ascends the curve of the arch) carries visitors to the observation room at the 630-foot apex in 4 minutes; the observation room is 7.5 feet wide by 65 feet long with 16 windows on each side — views east to Illinois across the Mississippi (the view that settlers saw when they departed west) and west to the St. Louis city skyline; the arch was the first major project to use the newly developed high-speed geodesic dome computing to calculate the catenary curve).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Museum of Westward Expansion (the underground museum beneath the Gateway Arch — the most significant single museum collection on the American West; the Lewis and Clark Expedition collection (the journals, the instruments, the maps and the specimens of the 1804-1806 journey that was the first overland crossing of the western United States — 8,000 miles in 2.5 years, from St. Louis to the Pacific coast and back; Jefferson's secret mission instructions to Lewis, the 30-mile detour around the Great Falls, the Shoshone guide Sacagawea who joined at the Mandan villages); the Louisiana Purchase room (the $15 million transaction that doubled the size of the United States; the original document facsimiles); the covered wagon display (the actual wagons used on the Oregon and California Trails; the ruts from 300,000 wagon wheels still visible at Scotts Bluff National Monument in Nebraska).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideAnheuser-Busch Brewery Tour (the 142-acre brewery complex in the Soulard neighbourhood — the largest single brewery in the world by volume produced; the St. Louis brewery where Adolphus Busch (German-born, married into the Anheuser family in 1861) invented the technique of pasteurising beer for long-distance shipping (1880) and refrigerated railcar distribution that made Budweiser a national brand; the Clydesdale horses (the signature Anheuser-Busch draft horses — the 8 Clydesdale teams that pull the iconic red Budweiser wagon are stabled at the brewery year-round; the horses weigh 1,800-2,200 lbs and stand 18 hands high; the Clydesdale stables are the most photographed element of the brewery tour); the Beechwood Aging cellar (the Budweiser process uses beechwood chips in the aging tanks to accelerate yeast flocculation — the "beechwood aging" claim on the can has a genuine technical basis).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideBusch Stadium (the home of the St. Louis Cardinals — the most successful franchise in National League history (11 World Series championships, second only to the New York Yankees; the Cardinals have the highest winning percentage in National League history); the Cardinals are the most popular sports team in St. Louis by a significant margin; the ballpark (opened 2006, 43,000 capacity, open-air with natural grass, the Gateway Arch visible from the upper deck beyond centerfield — the most recognisable architectural backdrop of any baseball stadium) in the Ballpark Village entertainment district (the bars and restaurants built around the stadium exterior, open on game days and beyond); an April-October Cardinals game is the most authentically St. Louis experience available; tickets from $15 (upper deck, bleachers) to $150+ (premium seats).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe St. Louis Zoo (in Forest Park — free admission for the main zoo areas; founded 1904 for the World's Fair; one of the oldest zoos in the United States; the only major zoo in the country that charges no admission (the zoo was designated a public benefit institution by a 1916 city referendum that has maintained free entry for 108 years); the 90-acre zoo has 14,000+ animals; the River's Edge exhibit (the African savanna landscape with hippos, black rhinos, African elephants and cheetahs); the Penguin & Puffin Coast (the underwater viewing gallery with 8 species of penguin); the Children's Zoo (free with zoo admission) with the Lakeside Cafe overlooking the lake in Forest Park; the Sea Lion Show (the educational demonstration with California sea lions — included in free admission).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Saint Louis Art Museum (in Forest Park — permanent collection free; one of the ten finest art museums in the United States; the museum was built for the 1904 World's Fair in the Beaux-Arts style by Cass Gilbert; the collection of 33,000 works spanning 5,000 years: the pre-Columbian art (the most important collection of ancient Mesoamerican art in the midwestern United States — the Olmec stone heads, the Maya jade, the Aztec featherwork); the German Expressionism (the largest collection of Max Beckmann paintings outside Germany; St. Louis was Beckmann's home in exile 1947-1950); the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism galleries (Monet's Water Lilies panel, Gauguin's Tahitian paintings, Van Gogh); the medieval European collection; the ancient Egypt and Nubia collection.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideMissouri Botanical Garden (Shaw's Garden — founded 1859 by the English merchant Henry Shaw; the oldest continuously operating botanical garden in the United States; 79 acres of cultivated gardens in the central St. Louis residential neighbourhood; the Climatron (the geodesic dome greenhouse, 1960 — the first geodesic dome greenhouse in the world, designed by Synergetics and Gyo Obata; houses a tropical rainforest at 70-90% humidity with 2,800 plant species and free-flying birds and butterflies); the Japanese Garden (the largest Japanese garden in North America — 14 acres with a 4-acre lake, authentic stone lanterns, a traditional teahouse (open for tea ceremonies on Sunday) and the largest private collection of Japanese maples in the US); the Chinese Garden; the Climatron night tour in summer.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideSoulard (the oldest neighbourhood in St. Louis, named for Antoine Soulard, the Spanish government surveyor who mapped the Louisiana Territory in 1796 — the French-influenced neighbourhood south of downtown with the brick townhouses, the Soulard Market (the oldest farmers' market west of the Mississippi, 1779 — the market where the French colonial and later German immigrant merchants traded; the Saturday morning market is still the largest produce and food market in St. Louis), and the blues music (Soulard is the centre of St. Louis blues — the blues bars of Soulard include BB's Jazz Blues & Soups, the Broadway Oyster Bar and Morgan Street Brewery; the St. Louis blues style (distinct from Chicago blues — slower, more mournful, with more emphasis on the piano and the traditional 12-bar form) traces to the Great Migration period when African American musicians moved to St. Louis from the Delta).
City Museum (the converted 10-story shoe factory in the Washington Avenue Loft District — the most singular museum/playground in America; not a traditional museum but an architectural art installation/maze built by artist Bob Cassilly and his team from recycled industrial materials (reclaimed architectural elements, industrial machines, circus equipment, school buses): the 5-story outdoor structure (MonstroCity — the outdoor climbing structure made from 2 abandoned city buses suspended 50 feet in the air, an old airplane with slides through the fuselage, and 10 stories of interlocking climbing tunnels, slides and caves accessible at night); the indoor caves and tunnels (the underground cave system accessible only by crawling through tight passages — the City Museum has no age restrictions and adults are explicitly welcome to explore the child-accessible-size crawl spaces).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideChuck Berry (October 18, 1926 - March 18, 2017 — the inventor of rock and roll guitar style, born in St. Louis (his childhood home at 3137 Whittier Avenue in the Ville neighbourhood); Berry invented the guitar techniques, the song structures (the 12-bar blues adapted for the electric guitar), the stage moves (the duck walk) and the lyrical content (celebrating teenage life — cars, girls, school, dancing) that became the foundational vocabulary of all subsequent rock and roll; the landmark "Johnny B. Goode" (1958) is the song sent aboard the Voyager Golden Record into space as one of the 27 recordings representing human music; Berry performed monthly concerts at Blueberry Hill restaurant in the University City Loop until 2014 (age 87); the Blueberry Hill duck room with the Chuck Berry exhibit).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideCahokia Mounds State Historic Site (15 km east of St. Louis in Illinois — the UNESCO World Heritage site (1982) of the pre-Columbian Native American city of Cahokia, the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico; at its peak c.1100 AD, Cahokia had a population of 10,000-20,000 people (contemporary London had 18,000) and 120 earthen mounds covering 15 km²; Monks Mound (the central mound, 30 m high, base dimensions 291 m × 236 m — larger at the base than the Great Pyramid of Giza; a wooden temple on the summit; the mound was built entirely by hand without wheeled vehicles or draft animals from 900-1100 AD, with an estimated 22 million cubic feet of earth moved); the Cahokia Woodhenge (the solar calendar circle of wooden posts whose alignments mark the solstices and equinoxes).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe uniquely St. Louis food experience: the Hill (the Italian-American neighbourhood south of Forest Park where the St. Louis Italian immigrant community has been since 1880; the birthplace of Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra; the toasted ravioli (breaded, deep-fried ravioli served with marinara sauce, invented at Ruggeri's restaurant on The Hill in the 1940s when a cook accidentally dropped ravioli in the deep fryer); the provel cheese pizza (the thin-crust, square-cut St. Louis pizza with the provel cheese (a processed blend of cheddar, Swiss and provolone — invented specifically for St. Louis pizza; melts into a smooth white pool rather than pulling into strings; strongly disliked by non-St. Louisians, deeply beloved by natives); the gooey butter cake at Park Avenue Coffee (the St. Louis breakfast pastry — a 1930s bakery accident where the wrong proportions created a dense, buttery, custardy flat cake; essentially the best possible mistake in baking).