Things to Do in Kansas City, United States: Walking Guide

Looking for things to do in Kansas City? Missouri’s largest city brings together major museums, jazz history, historic houses, distinctive architecture and memorable sports venues. From the River Market and 18th and Vine District to the Country Club Plaza and Union Station, Kansas City offers plenty to explore at your own pace. Neywo has a free audio guide for Kansas City with 91 narrated places.

What to See in Kansas City

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is one of Kansas City’s major cultural landmarks. Its encyclopedic collection includes art from nearly every continent and culture, with particular strength in Asian art. The experience continues outside with the sculpture park and the museum’s architecture.

The original museum, designed in a classical Beaux-Arts style by Kansas City architects Wight and Wight, opened in 1933. Beside it, the Bloch Building adds a very different architectural presence. Time magazine ranked the building first on its 2007 list of the ten best new and upcoming architectural marvels.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 as Missouri’s first museum of its kind and remains the state’s largest contemporary art museum. Its permanent collection contains more than 1,400 works, spanning art created after the 1913 Armory Show through contemporary practice.

The building, designed by Gunnar Birkerts, is part of the visit. Concrete, glass and steel shape a fluid design around a central atrium lit by a skylight. The museum also presents ten to twelve special exhibitions each year.

National Toy and Miniature Museum

On the University of Missouri–Kansas City campus, the National Toy and Miniature Museum combines finely made miniatures with historic toys. Its collection contains more than 100,000 objects, including what the museum describes as the world’s largest collection of fine-scale miniatures and one of the nation’s largest collections of antique toys on public display.

The exhibitions cover more than 33,000 square feet, giving visitors plenty of room to explore the details in the displays.

American Jazz Museum

Kansas City’s historic 18th and Vine District is home to the American Jazz Museum, where exhibits, listening stations, educational programs and live performances tell the story of American jazz, with a particular focus on Kansas City jazz.

The museum features artists including Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Big Joe Turner, Thelonious Monk and Etta James. Among its objects is the Graphon alto saxophone played by Charlie Parker during the January 1953 Massey Hall concert in Toronto.

The Blue Room, a fully operating jazz club within the museum, hosts live performances several nights a week. Youth programs include jazz ensembles, lessons, camps and visual storytelling sessions.

Black Archives of Mid-America

The Black Archives of Mid-America, also known as BAMA, is a learning and research center focused on the African American experience in the central Midwest. It adds an important historical perspective to a visit to Kansas City.

National World War I Museum and Memorial

The National World War I Museum and Memorial presents the First World War as a global story. Its exhibitions cover the causes of the conflict before 1914, the fighting through the 1918 armistice and the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

The site began as the Liberty Memorial in 1926. Congress gave it official museum status in 2004 and designated it the country’s official war memorial in 2014. Its collection includes more than 350,000 items.

A 265-foot Liberty Tower rises at the center of the grounds. Beneath the glass bridge, a field of 9,000 red poppies creates one of the site’s most striking visual features: each poppy represents 1,000 combatant deaths. The surrounding buildings and monuments use the Egyptian Revival style, and the grounds include two sphinxes and two exhibition halls.

Union Station and Science City

Union Station is home to Science City, an interactive science center with more than 120 hands-on displays. It also includes traveling exhibitions, the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium and the City Extreme Screen theatre.

Science City opened in November 1999 as part of the renewal of Union Station. For families and anyone who prefers learning through interaction, it offers a different way to experience one of Kansas City’s important historic buildings.

Arabia Steamboat Museum

In the River Market, the Arabia Steamboat Museum preserves hundreds of thousands of objects recovered from a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856. The Arabia was carrying merchandise intended for the American frontier when it went down.

The museum opened in 1991 and presents a 171-foot-long, full-scale reproduction of the Arabia’s main deck. Displays include the original boilers, engine and anchor, as well as the skeleton of a mule found on board, the ship’s six-ton stern and a reconstructed paddle wheel. Visitors can also watch short films about the sinking and excavation, along with staff working in the preservation lab.

Kansas City Museum

The Kansas City Museum occupies Corinthian Hall, a grand Beaux-Arts mansion built in 1910 for Robert A. Long, a lumber baron and civic leader. Designed by local architect Henry F. Hoit, the four-story mansion is distinguished by its Corinthian columns.

The estate became a public history and science museum in 1940 after Long’s heirs donated it to the Kansas City Museum Association. Today, the building provides a setting for exploring Kansas City’s history inside one of the city’s most remarkable former residences.

Historic houses in Westport and Midtown

Kansas City’s historic houses offer a closer look at nineteenth-century life. The Harris-Kearney House in Westport was built in 1855 and is the oldest brick residence in the city. Originally located at the intersection of modern-day Westport Road and Main Street, it was moved to 4000 Baltimore in 1922.

The John Wornall House Museum presents the daily life of a prosperous family before the Civil War. Together, these houses add a domestic dimension to Kansas City’s broader stories of settlement, growth and civic development.

National Airline History Museum

At Kansas City Downtown Airport, the National Airline History Museum explores the history of airlines in the United States. It gives Kansas City’s aviation story a place alongside its better-known museums devoted to art, music, war and local history.

Arrowhead Stadium

Arrowhead Stadium is the home venue of the Kansas City Chiefs. Opened in 1972, it forms part of the Truman Sports Complex alongside Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals.

Known to fans as Arrowhead or “The Red Sea,” the open-air stadium is noted for its red seats, passionate supporters and exceptional scale. It seats more than 76,000 people and remains the oldest stadium in the American Football Conference.

Belger Arts Center

The nonprofit Belger Arts Center combines a fine art collection with changing exhibitions. Since its establishment in 2000, it has presented shows featuring ceramics, painting, sculpture, digital photographic projections and black-and-white photography.

The center’s collection, held by the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation, contains more than 1,500 works, with a strong focus on prominent American artists from the late twentieth century.

College basketball at the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame

The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, part of the College Basketball Experience at the T-Mobile Center, is devoted to men’s college basketball. Its first class was inducted in 2006 and included Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Dean Smith, John Wooden and the family of James Naismith.

The wider experience also includes The Entry Experience, The Fan Experience and The Game, creating an interactive setting around the museum.

Explore Kansas City with a Self-Guided Audio Guide

Neywo’s Kansas City audio guide includes five walking tours, one bus route and one bike route, with 91 narrated places in total. The stories are available in 11 languages and play as you reach each place, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule.

Choose a route based on your interests:

• Art Deco Downtown: Courthouse, City Hall and the Skyscrapers — a 3.04 km walk lasting 86 minutes, with 10 stops.
• Crossroads to Liberty Memorial: Rails, Neon and a Poppy Field — a 3.73 km walk lasting 89 minutes, with 8 stops.
• Country Club Plaza and the Museum Mile: Seville, Wright and Art — a 3.41 km walk lasting 84 minutes, with 7 stops.
• Theatre Row: Power and Light to the Folly — a 2.28 km walk lasting 78 minutes, with 10 stops.
• Westport and Midtown: Benton’s Kansas City — a 1.97 km walk lasting 48 minutes, with 4 stops.
• Broadway 47: Crossroads, Downtown and Union Station — a 7.7 km bus route lasting 33 minutes, with 9 stops.
• Penn Valley Park and Liberty Memorial by Bike — a 1.4 km bike route lasting 7 minutes, with 4 stops.

Download Neywo and explore Kansas City with the city’s stories arriving exactly where they happened. You decide the pace, the route and the stops—without joining a group or following a schedule.

Kansas City is part of Missouri in the United States. For another city in the state, you can also explore Saint Louis or Branson.