Denver

Top things to do in Denver

1. 01

   Red Rocks Amphitheatre - a show between two tilted sandstone monoliths

   nightlife music scenic ⭐ Highly recommended

   Two enormous slabs of red sandstone, tipped up on end by the same forces that raised the Rockies, form the walls of a natural amphitheatre in the foothills about half an hour west of downtown, with the plains and the city lights spread out beyond the stage. It has hosted everyone from the Beatles onward and a night here is the single best thing Denver offers. On show-free days the park is open to walk the trails and run the seats, and the terraces fill with outdoor fitness classes on summer mornings; a small hall of fame sits under the top row.

2. 02

   Union Station - the Great Hall as the city's front room

   culture arts food ⭐ Highly recommended

   The 1914 Beaux-Arts terminal was rebuilt as a public living room rather than a waiting area: a long hall of leather sofas, shuffleboard and lamps under white arches, with bars, restaurants and a hotel opening straight off it, the airport train arriving under the canopy behind and light rail and coaches on the levels below. Nobody minds if you sit there all afternoon buying nothing, and plenty of people do. The neon sign on the facade telling you to travel by train is the city's most photographed object.

3. 03

   Denver Art Museum - Indigenous art behind a jagged titanium wing

   culture arts 👍 Popular

   Daniel Libeskind's titanium-clad Hamilton Building is all sharp folds and leaning walls, and it stands beside a fortress-like 1971 tower by Gio Ponti clad in a million grey glass tiles - two buildings that argue with each other across a plaza of sculpture. Inside is one of the oldest and largest collections of Native American art in the country, a deep Western American holding, and a strong modern and contemporary wing.

4. 04

   Denver Museum of Nature and Science - dinosaurs, and the Front Range from the top floor

   culture arts nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   A big, old-fashioned natural history museum on the eastern edge of City Park, known for its dinosaur halls, its Egyptian mummies and a long run of hand-painted wildlife dioramas that are works of art in their own right. A planetarium and a giant-screen cinema sit inside. The top-floor windows give the cleanest view in the city: park, skyline and the whole Front Range lined up behind it.

5. 05

   Coors Field - a ballgame in thin air, and the row of purple seats

   culture arts 👍 Popular

   The ballpark that started the warehouse district's revival, built in brick to match its neighbours and famous for the way a mile of altitude carries a struck ball further than it has any right to go. One row in the upper deck is painted purple to mark exactly one mile above sea level, the outfield bar deck is a Denver institution in itself, and the sunset view over the outfield wall is straight at the mountains.

6. 06

   Colorado State Capitol - the step that sits exactly one mile up

   history

   A gold-domed granite copy of the national Capitol, gilded with leaf from Colorado mines, panelled inside with a rose onyx from a state quarry that was worked out in the process and cannot be matched anywhere. On the west steps a marker records the point one mile above sea level; it has been re-surveyed twice since, so there are now three competing markers within a few steps of each other. Free tours climb into the dome for the view down the main street to the mountains.

7. 07

   RiNo - murals, taprooms and warehouses north of the tracks

   culture arts nightlife music

   An industrial strip across the railway from downtown where nearly every roller door and blank wall carries commissioned street art, much of it repainted each year during a mural festival, so the walls you photograph will be gone by your next visit. Breweries, distilleries, coffee roasters, galleries and food halls fill the sheds in between. Walk Larimer and Walnut Streets in daylight for the art and come back after dark for the taprooms.

8. 08

   Denver Botanic Gardens - alpine and high-plains planting in the middle of town

   nature wildlife scenic

   One of the best gardens in the country for dry-climate and mountain plants: a serious alpine rock garden, a steppe collection that sets Colorado's plains beside their counterparts in Mongolia and Patagonia, a Japanese garden and a tropical conservatory under a spiky concrete-and-glass dome. An outdoor concert series runs on the lawn through summer and sells out quickly.

9. 09

   Clyfford Still Museum - one painter, one building, the entire estate

   culture arts

   The abstract expressionist left almost everything he had kept - some three thousand works, most of it never publicly seen - to whichever American city would build a museum for it and show nothing else. Denver won the bid. The result is a low board-formed concrete building beside the art museum, lit through a perforated ceiling, where one artist's whole career unfolds in a couple of hours.

10. 10

    Molly Brown House Museum - the Titanic survivor's Capitol Hill mansion

    history

    A stone Queen Anne house on Pennsylvania Street, home to Margaret Brown, who survived the Titanic, pushed her lifeboat back towards the wreck to look for swimmers, organised relief for its poorer passengers and later ran for the Senate. The restored interiors are a good look at silver-boom Denver, and the museum has spent years separating the real woman from the unsinkable stage character, a nickname she never used in life.

11. 11

    Meow Wolf Convergence Station - four floors of walk-in art under the interchange

    culture arts

    An immersive art house squeezed into a wedge of land beneath a highway interchange, where four invented worlds have collided and you wander between them opening cupboards, crawling through tunnels and assembling a story from what you find. Built largely by Colorado artists: loud, saturated, genuinely strange, and better with time than with a schedule. Book ahead rather than turning up at the weekend.

12. 12

    Larimer Square - Victorian storefronts under the string lights

    food shopping

    The city's oldest block, and the only one of its kind left standing because a single preservationist bought the whole thing in the 1960s rather than watch it fall to urban renewal. Cast-iron and brick storefronts now hold restaurants, cocktail bars and independent shops, with strings of bulbs criss-crossing overhead. Half an hour to look at, an evening if you eat there.

13. 13

    Green chile - the smothered plates that define Denver eating

    food

    The local dish is a pork and roasted-chile gravy poured over burritos, eggs, fries and anything else that will hold still, thinner and more tomato-forward than the New Mexican version it descends from. It is served everywhere from Federal Boulevard taquerias to old Mexican-American dining rooms near downtown that have been doing it the same way for generations. Ask for it smothered, and expect to be asked how hot you want it.

14. 14

    Cherry Creek Trail - ride the creek bed out of the city

    adventure scenic

    A paved path runs below street level in the creek bed from the confluence park where Denver was founded, through the centre and out south-east for tens of kilometres to a reservoir on the plains, ducking under the roads rather than crossing them. With the South Platte trail it is the reason Denver works on a bike, and it is how locals reach the parks and the ballpark without touching traffic.

Getting to & around Denver

Know before you go