City

In 2008, Chicago hosted 45.6 million international and domestic visitors. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago has the fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, just behind Tokyo, New York City, and Los Angeles, and ranking ahead of London and Paris. Chicago is one of the most important Worldwide Centers of Commerce and trade. Chicagos notability has found expression in numerous forms of popular culture, including novels, plays, films, songs, various types of journals (for example, sports, entertainment, business, trade, and academic), and the news media. The city has many nicknames, which reflect the impressions and opinions about historical and contemporary Chicago. The best-known include: Chi-town, Windy City and Second City.

Windy
Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois, the most populous city in the American Midwest and the third most populous city in the United States, with over 2.7 million residents. Its metropolitan area (also called Chicagoland), which extends into Indiana and Wisconsin, is the third-largest in the United States with an estimated 9.8 million people. Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. Today, Chicago is listed as an alpha+ global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research

Chicago Office of Tourism 78 E Washington St Chicago, IL (312) 744-2400 ChooseChicago.com

Network, and ranks seventh in the world in

Chicago
Illinois

the 2012 Global Cities Index. The city is an international hub for finance, commerce, industry, telecommunications, and transportation, with OHare International Airport being the second-busiest airport in the world in terms of traffic movements.

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In 2008, Chicago attracted 32.4 million domestic leisure travelers, 11.7 million domestic business travelers and 1.3 million overseas visitors. These visitors contributed more than US$11.8 billion to Chicagos economy. Upscale shopping along the Magnificent Mile and State Street, thousands of restaurants, as well as Chicagos eminent architecture, continue to draw tourists. The city is the United States third-largest convention destination. A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Chicago the fourth most walkable of fifty largest cities in the United States. Most conventions are held at McCormick Place, just south of Soldier Field. The historic Chicago Cultural Center (1897), originally serving as the Chicago Public Library, now houses the citys Visitor Information Center, galleries and

exhibit halls. The ceiling of its Preston Bradley Hall includes a 38 ft Tiffany glass dome. Grant Park holds Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain (1927), and the Art Institute of Chicago. The park also hosts the annual Taste of Chicago festival. In Millennium Park, there is the reflective Cloud Gate sculpture. Cloud Gate, a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, is the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park. Also, an outdoor restaurant transforms into an ice rink in the winter season. Two tall glass sculptures make up the Crown Fountain. The fountains two towers display visual effects from LED images of Chicagoans faces, along with water spouting from their lips. Frank Gehrys detailed, stainless steel band shell, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, hosts the classical Grant Park Music Festival concert series. Behind the pavilions stage is the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, an indoor venue for mid-sized performing arts companies, including the Chicago Opera Theater and Music of the Baroque.

Navy Pier, located just east of Streeterville, is 3,000 ft (910 m) long and houses retail stores, restaurants, museums, exhibition halls and auditoriums. Its 150-foot (46 m) tall Ferris wheel is one of the most visited landmarks in the Midwest, attracting about 8 million people annually. Chicago was the first city in the world to ever erect a ferris wheel. On June 4, 1998, the city officially opened the Museum Campus, a 10-acre lakefront park, surrounding three of the citys main museums, each of which is of national importance: the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium. The Museum Campus joins the southern section of Grant Park, which includes the renowned Art Institute of Chicago. Buckingham Fountain anchors the downtown park along the lakefront. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute has an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern archaeological artifacts. Other museums and galleries in Chicago include the Chicago History Museum, the DuSable

Museum of African American History, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the Polish Museum of America, the Museum of Broadcast Communications, the Pritzker Military Library, the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and the Museum of Science and Industry. The top activity while visitors tour Chicago for leisure is entertainment, approximately 33% of all leisure travelers. Facilities such as McCormick Place and the Chicago Theatre contribute to this percentage.

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