3 Best Sights in Chicago, Illinois

Intellectuals come to the University of Chicago to breathe in the rarified air: after all, the faculty, former faculty, and alumni of this esteemed institution have won 99 Nobel Prizes, awarded in every field, including President Obama's 2009 Peace Prize. History buffs and art lovers are drawn by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and Smart Museum of Art, while the university's professional theater company, Court Theatre, stages new and classic works. Architecture aficionados won’t be disappointed either.

The dominant building here, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, is a neo-Gothic beauty complete with glorious stained-glass windows, a vaulted ceiling, 72-bell carillon (the single largest musical instrument ever built), and 207-foot-high stone tower. In sharp contrast, the Booth School of Business is very modern looking; its horizontal accents imitate the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House (1910), located directly across the street. Mid-century buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen, as well as contemporary award winners by MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang, postmodernist Helmut Jahn, and husband-and-wife duo Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, are also worth seeking out. Self-guided tours of campus highlights, points of interest, and public art on campus can be found at  visit.uchicago.edu/campus-guides.

When neo-nazis planned to march in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie in the 1970s, local Holocaust survivors reacted by creating the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, a group determined to educate the public about the atrocities of World War II. In 2009, the foundation unveiled the 65,000-square-foot Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. The collection includes more than 20,000 items that belonged to Holocaust victims and survivors. Permanent exhibits include the Richard & Jill Chaifetz Family Virtual Reality Gallery, which takes visitors on a journey with Holocaust survivors, and the Spagat Family Voices of Genocide Exhibition, which explores how and why genocide continues to occur across geography and time. The Abe & Ida Cooper Survivor Stories Experience features interactive holograms of Holocaust survivors telling their stories.

This private university, founded in 1851 by town namesake John Evans, puts Evanston on the map. Its sprawling Evanston campus hugs Lake Michigan. Strolling around its ivy-covered walls while listening to the crashing waves hitting the shore is a delightful experience. The campus is home to highly regarded undergraduate and graduate schools (the Medill School of Journalism and Kellogg School of Management among them) as well as the Block Museum of Art, which has more than 6,000 works in its permanent collection. Northwestern's Big Ten athletics program draws a mix of students and locals to games, especially when the Wildcats football team play.