Museum Campus

The Museum Campus is a 57-acre lakefront park surrounding three of the city’s most notable museums, all dedicated to the natural sciences: the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum of Natural History.  Before the reconfiguration of Lake Shore Drive in 1998, lanes ran through the middle of this area, making it difficult to go from the parking lots to the museums. This park is one of the city’s top cultural draws and was created so that it would be a scenic pedestrian-friendly area for both visiting tourists and residents alike. It is beautifully landscaped and includes jogging paths and walkways as well. A beautiful walk along Solidarity Drive, a narrow isthmus links Northerly Island to the mainland. As you make the drive, it is lined with several gorgeous bronze monuments commemorating Kosciuszko, Havlicek and Nicholas Copernicus, a replica of a famous 19th-century work in Warsaw by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

The Adler Planetarium
The Adler Planetarium sits on what was once called Northerly Island, the planetarium has directed visitors’ eyes toward the heavens since Max Adler opened the Chicago museum and planetarium in 1930.
Guide to The Adler Planetarium
The John G. Shedd Aquarium

When the Shedd Aquarium joined the Campus in 1930, it was the newest of the Chicago museums to be built in Grant Park. And as with all great building projects, it was the citizens that made it happen. Led by John G. Shedd, a retired president of Macy’s on State Street, they rallied to build the world’s largest aquarium. Today, the Shedd houses nearly 22,000 aquatic animals, and more than two million people per year visit it.
Guide to The John G. Shedd Aquarium

The Field Museum

Where do you put the volumes of materials that come from studying the sciences of anthropology, botany, geology, paleontology, and zoology? How about one of the finest museums in Chicago,    The Field Museum.
Biological, geological, and cultural objects are collected and stored at this final stop of the Chicago museum campus. The collection has an inventory of more than 20 million items