Explore Seattle

The Seattle Central Library is the main building of the Seattle Public Library, opened in 2004 and designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA with LMN Architects. Its 11 levels sit behind a diagonal net of steel and glass; inside, visitors can walk the Books Spiral, a continuous ramp through the nonfiction collection, and see the Red Floor.

Smith Tower is a 38-story skyscraper in Pioneer Square, completed in 1914 for the typewriter manufacturer Lyman Cornelius Smith and for decades the tallest building on the US West Coast. Visitors see exhibits on the building's history and go up to the 35th-floor observatory, with views over the city and Elliott Bay and a bar in the former Chinese Room.

St. James Cathedral is the Catholic cathedral of the Archdiocese of Seattle, on Ninth Avenue in the First Hill neighborhood, dedicated in 1907. Its central dome collapsed under heavy snow in 1916 and was never rebuilt; two bell towers frame the west front, and inside are stained-glass windows by Charles Connick and several pipe organs.

The Seattle Art Museum occupies a limestone building on First Avenue, a block from Pike Place Market, designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, opened in 1991 and enlarged in 2007. Its collection of nearly 25,000 works covers Native art of the Northwest Coast, African, Asian, European and American art and contemporary work, alongside changing exhibitions.

The Seattle Great Wheel is a 53-metre Ferris wheel at the end of Pier 57 on the Elliott Bay waterfront, opened in June 2012. Its 42 enclosed gondolas each seat up to eight people, and the ride of three turns reaches out over the water, with views across the bay and back over the downtown skyline.

Pike Place Market is a public market on the edge of downtown Seattle, above the Elliott Bay waterfront. It opened on 17 August 1907, when farmers sold produce from wagons on Pike Place. Under the red Public Market sign and clock, its arcades and lower floors hold fish and produce stalls, crafts tables, bakeries, small shops and restaurants.

The Seattle Aquarium is a public aquarium on the Elliott Bay waterfront, opened in 1977 on Piers 59 and 60. Its exhibits focus on the marine life of Puget Sound and the Pacific, with harbor seals, sea otters and an underwater dome, while the Ocean Pavilion, opened in 2024, shows sharks and rays of the Coral Triangle.

T-Mobile Park is the baseball stadium of the Seattle Mariners in the SoDo district, south of downtown Seattle. It opened in July 1999 as Safeco Field and took its present name in 2019. A retractable roof covers the field in rain, and visitors come for Major League games and for guided ballpark tours.

Pacific Science Center is a science museum at Seattle Center, housed in the former United States Science Pavilion that Minoru Yamasaki designed for the 1962 world's fair, with white arches rising above its reflecting pools. Its buildings hold hands-on science exhibits, a planetarium, two IMAX theaters and a laser dome.

The Space Needle is a 184-metre observation tower at Seattle Center, built for the 1962 World's Fair and opened in April 1962. Its saucer-shaped top holds an observation level about 160 metres up, with glass walls and a rotating glass floor, The Loupe. From there visitors look over downtown, Elliott Bay, the Cascades and Mount Rainier.

The Museum of Pop Culture is a museum of contemporary pop culture at Seattle Center, founded by Paul Allen and opened in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. Its building by Frank Gehry is clad in folded sheets of coloured and polished metal, and the Seattle Center Monorail runs through it. Exhibitions cover rock music, science fiction, fantasy, horror and video games.

The Seattle Center Monorail is an elevated line built for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, Seattle's world's fair. Its two original Alweg trains run about 1.4 kilometres along Fifth Avenue between Westlake Center downtown and Seattle Center, beside the Space Needle, in a ride of around two minutes; the line has been a city landmark since 2003.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum is housed in a 1933 Art Deco building by Carl F. Gould in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, the original home of the Seattle Art Museum. It reopened as a museum of Asian art in 1994 and again in 2020 after a three-year renovation, and shows historic and contemporary works from China, Japan, Korea, India, the Himalayas and Southeast Asia.

Gas Works Park is a 7.7-hectare park on the north shore of Lake Union, on the site of a coal gasification plant that ran from 1906 to 1956. Landscape architect Richard Haag kept the rusting towers and pipework when the park opened in 1975; around them are lawns, a play barn and a grassy hill with views across the lake to downtown Seattle.

Woodland Park Zoo is a zoological garden in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of north Seattle, laid out in part of Woodland Park, which the city bought in 1899. Its roughly 37 hectares hold about 900 animals of some 250 species in habitats grouped by region, among them the Assam Rhino Reserve and a Humboldt penguin exhibit.

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, known as the Ballard Locks, carry boats between the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Puget Sound at the west end of Salmon Bay, between Ballard and Magnolia. Opened in 1917 and run by the US Army Corps of Engineers, they include a fish ladder with underwater viewing windows and the Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Garden.

The National Nordic Museum in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood presents the history, art and culture of the Nordic countries and of the Nordic immigrants who settled in the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1980 as the Nordic Heritage Museum, it moved in 2018 into a new building on NW Market Street and received its national designation in 2019.

The Museum of Flight is an air and space museum at the southern end of Boeing Field in Tukwila, just south of Seattle, founded in 1965. The glass-walled Great Gallery holds more than 50 historic aircraft, Boeing's original 1909 Red Barn factory stands beside it, and the Aviation Pavilion shows a Concorde and the first jet Air Force One.