08/20/2018
Luxury Hotel Near Millennium Park
Calling Hotel Chicago your home base in the Windy City, you’ve got some of the best-known urban landmarks in the country within minutes of your Autograph Collection room or suite. Among them is the spectacular public space of Millennium Park just across the Chicago River.
Opened in 2004 as part of the greater Grant Park mosaic, Millennium Park includes world-class art, performance venues, and more. Here’s a non-exhaustive roundup of some of its leading attractions—yours to enjoy mere minutes from Hotel Chicago!
Cloud Gate
You’ll have to pay your respects to Millennium Park’s symbol, Sir Anish Kapoor’s world-famous sculpture Cloud Gate. From afar, its resemblance to an enormous bead of liquid mercury—one of Kapoor’s inspirations—is striking; up close, staring into its reflective stainless-steel face, you’ll enjoy a warped view of the Chicago skyline and your fellow Millennium Park visitors.
Crown Fountain
Refresh yourself on a hot summer afternoon and appreciate some arresting art in the same fell swoop with a visit to Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain, which includes a pair of soaring towers displaying images (including faces of Chicagoans) and light and spouting into a reflecting pool in between.
The Jay Pritzker Pavilion & Grant Park Music Festival
Another gorgeous installation—the work of famed architect Frank Gehry—the Jay Pritzker Pavilion makes one of Chicago’s great outdoor music venues. Its rippled stainless-steel bandshell delivers outstanding acoustics, well on display during the summer concerts of the Grant Park Music Festival put on by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.
Speaking of, the Grant Park Music Festival’s closing performances include The Old Maid & the Thief on Wednesday, August 15th, for which Ann Toomey, Christopher Kenney, and other artists of the Ryan Opera Center will join the Grant Park Orchestra; and Carmina Burana (Orff) and The Water Goblin (Dvorak) on Friday, August 17th and Saturday, August 18th.
Lurie Garden
Millennium Park’s Lurie Garden evokes in its lovely year-round botanical space the journey of Chicago from wild marshland to a modern City in a Garden, also evoking poet Carl Sandburg’s tag for the metropolis, the “City of the Big Shoulders,” in its striking, 15-foot-tall shoulder hedge. It’s a joy to stand among its blooms and foliage—including a rich share of native Illinois plants—with the skyscraping loom of Downtown as backdrop.
Pedestrian Bridges
From Millennium Park you can cross over to Maggie Daley Park via the BP Pedestrian Bridge, or to the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago via the Nichols Bridgeway.
Millennium Park: A Must-do Daytrip From Hotel Chicago
Whether you’ve only got time for a quick close-up with Cloud Gate or you can luxuriate for an afternoon, definitely consider a trip to Millennium Park during your stay with us here at Hotel Chicago!
