Explore Seattle

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.

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 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 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.

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.