Food & Drink
This very special walking tour digs into how and why the 1893 World’s Fair captures imaginations more than any other event in Chicago history. Unlike other World’s Fair tours and Devil in the White City tours, which likely revolve around facts and trivia, you’ll dig deeper on this tour.
On this fun and insightful walking tour, you’ll venture into beautiful architectural spaces from the era. You will play a few thoughtfully designed games, like visual scavenger hunts. Along with guide commentary, your guide will show you on shared iPads material from archives and photographs that illuminate this event, also known as the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
This downtown tour visits some of the few remaining and spectacular buildings from the time of the World’s Fair. The fairgrounds themselves were south of downtown, but you can best see the impact of the fair in the Loop. Here the architecture and landscape still show the World’s Fair imprint even today, nearly 125 years later. And beyond just looking at buildings from outside, our mostly indoor walking tour sees the beauty of architectural details within.
On this walking tour, you will eat a couple light snacks (we used to call this a “food tour†but have minimized the food, just fyi in case you’re reading reviews on Yelp or TripAdvisor). Plus, you can opt to get drinks (on you), too!
You can think of this 2.75-hour-long walking tour as being 5% outdoors, 95% indoors, 20% clue-based games and visual scavenger hunts, 10% drinking time, and 100% awesome historical tour time. We know the math doesn’t add up – we hope you get the idea!
With just intermittent walks outside, the 1893 World’s Fair Tour makes for a great walking tour in all seasons. This tour makes the World’s Fair’s lasting impact come to life. We hope you’ll join us!
Walking Tour Highlights
Walking distance: 0.9 mile
To streamline the tour, we take your order and cash for your second drink at check-in ($6 for beer, $8 for wine, includes gratuity).
IMPORTANT: After registration, please send a message to us (using the link on the event page below) with your email address so we can send along a map and other event details.
*Professional tour guide commentary *Shared iPads with historic photos *Light snacks *Game prizes and gifts
This course was amazing. I learned so much and had a wonderful time. The instructor took the time to make sure everyone in the course understood what was going on and was always avilable for questions. I will definitely be taking this course again.
I had a blast and the instructor was great. Can't wait to do another course soon. Great job everyone.
Would definitely do this again. Such an amazing experience. Great people in class and I learned so much. Thanks.