Cincinnati: The Queen City of the Ohio River

The Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal is one of the most extraordinary public buildings in the United States — a 1933 Art Deco railroad station at 1301 Western Avenue, designed by architects Fellheimer and Wagner, with a 106-foot half-dome rotunda whose interior is covered in mosaic murals by Winold Reiss depicting Cincinnati history, occupations, and industry. The building was a National Historic Landmark and recently completed a $228 million renovation and restoration (reopened 2018). Five museums are housed within: the Cincinnati History Museum, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives, the Cincinnati Natural History and Science Museum, the Duke Energy Children's Museum, and the Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater. The building is the attraction — the museums are a bonus.

Over-the-Rhine (OTR) is the most architecturally significant neighborhood in Cincinnati — a National Historic Landmark district of approximately 1,000 Italianate commercial buildings built by German immigrants in the 1860s and 1870s, on a street grid that retains the original 19th-century urban character. Once the most densely populated neighborhood in the US, it declined severely in the mid-20th century and has been progressively revitalized since the 2000s into the finest restaurant and bar district in Cincinnati. Washington Park (a restored 19th-century park with a performance bandstand) anchors the neighborhood's public life. The Cincinnati Music Hall (1878, Gothic Revival — one of the finest Victorian concert halls in the US) is OTR's most magnificent building.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is one of the most important museums in the American South and Midwest — located on the Cincinnati riverfront, exactly where the Ohio River divided the slave states of the South from the free North, and where thousands of enslaved people crossed to freedom. The museum's exhibits on the history of slavery, the Underground Railroad, and the legacy of human trafficking are among the most powerful in any US museum. The Slave Pen exhibit (a reconstructed holding pen recovered from a Kentucky farm) is the most viscerally moving single exhibit in the building. Entry approximately $15.

Cincinnati chili is the city's most famous and most controversial culinary contribution — a ground beef sauce seasoned with an unexpected combination of cinnamon, chocolate, allspice, cumin, and Worcestershire, served over spaghetti (three-way: chili, spaghetti, shredded cheddar), with diced onion (four-way), or with kidney beans (five-way). The two major chains — Skyline Chili and Gold Star Chili — operate dozens of locations across the city, and locals have fierce loyalties. Ordering a cheese coney (a hot dog in a steamed bun with Cincinnati chili and shredded cheddar) is the most accessible introduction.

The Over-the-Rhine dining scene has made Cincinnati nationally recognized in the past decade — Boca (the most acclaimed fine dining), Orchids at Palm Court (in the Hilton Netherlands Plaza, most historic), and the concentration of craft cocktail bars, restaurants, and breweries along Vine Street and Main Street make OTR one of the finest dining neighborhoods in the Midwest. Three standout new restaurants — Sudova, Nolia Kitchen, and The Baker's Table — have received recent national recognition. The Cincinnati craft beer scene (Rhinegeist Brewery, in a 1895 former bottling plant in OTR, is the largest and most visited) reflects the German brewing heritage of the neighborhood.

Graeter's Ice Cream is Cincinnati's most beloved food institution — a family company founded in 1870, making French pot ice cream in the small-batch tradition (2.5 quarts per pot, churned slowly) that produces an intensely rich, dense product unlike any mass-produced ice cream. The black raspberry chocolate chip is the most iconic flavor — the chocolate chips form from liquid chocolate poured directly into the freezing cream, creating irregular chunks of intense chocolate throughout. Available at multiple Cincinnati locations and shipped nationally.