Visiting Cleveland, United States: Top Sights on Foot

Cleveland, Ohio, brings together major museums, music history, historic bridges, markets and Lake Erie attractions. From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the Cleveland Museum of Art and USS Cod, the city offers plenty to see across downtown, University Circle, Ohio City and its surrounding neighborhoods. Neywo has a free audio guide for Cleveland with 112 narrated places.

What to See in Cleveland

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stands on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland. Known as the Rock Hall, it explores the history of rock music and the performers, producers, engineers and other figures who shaped it.

The Ahmet Ertegun Main Exhibit Hall combines interactive displays, films, music and reading materials. The museum also includes the Backstage Stories exhibit, the Klipse Stage and the Foster Theater. Its angular lakeshore building was designed by I. M. Pei and dedicated on September 1, 1995. Cleveland became the museum’s chosen home in 1986, after the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established in 1983.

Cleveland Museum of Art

In University Circle’s Wade Park District, the Cleveland Museum of Art holds more than 61,000 works from around the world. Its collections are particularly substantial in Asian and Egyptian art, making it one of the city’s essential cultural stops.

The neoclassical main building dates from 1916 and was designed by Benjamin S. Hubbell and Dominick W. Benes. Later additions include a wing by Marcel Breuer and a major expansion and modernization project designed by Rafael Viñoly. The completed complex provides 55,000 square meters of exhibition space.

USS Cod

Permanently moored on Cleveland’s Lake Erie shoreline, USS Cod is both a museum ship and a memorial to the sailors who served aboard it during World War II. The Gato-class submarine was launched on March 21, 1943, and commissioned three months later.

The visit preserves the submarine’s original character: visitors enter through its original hatches and descend its original ladders, without modern staircases or doors added. USS Cod is 312 feet long and weighs 1,525 tons. Its five diesel engines were all built in Cleveland. During the war, it completed seven patrols in the Pacific and is also remembered for rescuing 56 Dutch sailors from the grounded submarine O-19.

Great Lakes Science Center

The Great Lakes Science Center occupies a lakeside position in downtown Cleveland beside Lake Erie. Since opening in July 1996, it has used interactive exhibits, demonstrations and hands-on activities to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Its subjects range from the Great Lakes environment to biomedical technology, advanced energy, space exploration and scientific phenomena. Energy and sustainability displays include a wind turbine and a 300-foot solar array, while the Cleveland Clinic Dome Theater presents documentaries and films.

International Women’s Air & Space Museum

At Burke Lakefront Airport, the International Women’s Air & Space Museum preserves the history of women in aviation and space. Its collection began with the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots, whose members gathered artifacts and memorabilia connected with women in aviation.

The museum moved to the airport in 1998 and occupies space in the terminal lobby and west concourse. It documents women’s contributions to aviation and space while continuing to expand the story beyond its original collection.

West Side Market

West Side Market has connected food, commerce and community in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood since 1840. Its current building, completed in 1912, is recognizable by its clock tower and its combination of Neo-Classical and Byzantine architectural influences.

Designed by the Cleveland firm Hubbell and Benes, the building contains nearly 100 vendor stalls, with another 85 outside. The market remains one of Cleveland’s enduring gathering places and a useful stop for experiencing the city through its food culture.

Hope Memorial Bridge and the Guardians of Traffic

Hope Memorial Bridge is an art deco truss bridge spanning the Cuyahoga River. It carries Lorain Avenue on the west side toward Carnegie Avenue on the east and stretches 4,490 feet, or about 1,370 meters.

Its best-known feature is the Guardians of Traffic: four pairs of monumental statues standing on opposite-facing ends of two pairs of pylons. Carved from Berea Sandstone in Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood, the figures hold vehicles that represent changing forms of transportation.

Nearby, Superior Viaduct—also known as the Superior Avenue Viaduct—is another Cleveland road bridge.

Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum

Part of the Cleveland History Center in University Circle, the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum presents around 170 automobiles along with aircraft and other forms of transportation. The collection spans automotive history from an 1897 Panhard et Levassor to the first production 1981 DeLorean.

The museum also includes motorcycles, boats and bicycles. Among its distinctive objects are DEXTER, a self-driving car that competed in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, and Tinkerbelle, the small sailboat Robert Manry used for his solo voyage across the Atlantic in 1965.

Cleveland Museum of Natural History

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History connects scientific research, education and public discovery through collections covering fossils, wildlife, astronomy and geology. More than four million specimens represent fields including anthropology, archaeology, botany, geology, paleontology, wildlife biology and zoology.

The museum’s story began with a taxidermy collection started by Leonard Case Sr. in the 1830s. It was founded in 1920 by Cyrus S. Eaton and moved to its permanent University Circle home in 1958.

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, or moCa, is devoted to contemporary art and is known for a building that forms part of the experience. Designed by Farshid Moussavi with Foreign Office Architects and Westlake Reed Leskosky, the four-story, six-sided structure is clad in reflective black stainless steel.

Its surface mirrors the surrounding plaza and changes as it is viewed from different angles. Inside, electric blue walls and ceilings create a vivid setting for exhibitions. Flexible walls, glass partitions and a guillotine wall system allow the galleries to change for different displays.

A Christmas Story House

In Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood, A Christmas Story House is a public museum set in a nineteenth-century Victorian house used for exterior and some interior scenes in the 1983 film A Christmas Story. After its purchase by a private developer in 2004, the house was restored and renovated to resemble its appearance on screen.

Baseball Heritage Museum and League Park

The Baseball Heritage Museum occupies the former League Park ticket house in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood. Founded in 1997, it became part of the renovated League Park complex rededicated on August 23, 2014.

Beyond the museum, the surviving ball field is still used for local baseball. League Park was built in 1891, rebuilt with concrete and steel in 1910, and hosted teams including the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Spiders, Cleveland Lake Shores and Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League. Most of the structure was demolished in 1951, but the field and several remnants remain.

Bohemian National Hall

Bohemian National Hall, also known as Česká národní síň, stands in Cleveland’s Broadway and Slavic Village neighborhood. The historic cultural hall remains connected with the city’s Czech community and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in May 1975.

Children’s Museum of Cleveland

Housed in the historic Stager-Beckwith mansion, the Children’s Museum of Cleveland offers child-directed exploration for children from birth through age eight. Its hands-on exhibits support early motor, social, emotional and cognitive development, with adults and caregivers encouraged to join in.

Permanent exhibits include Adventure City, which encourages imaginative play, and Wonder Lab, where children encounter basic scientific and engineering ideas through interactive experiments. The museum was founded in 1981 and reopened in the renovated mansion in November 2017.

Explore Cleveland with a Self-Guided Tour

Neywo offers five walking tours, one bus route and one bike route in Cleveland, covering 112 narrated places in total:

• Public Square to the Group Plan: a 2.05 km walk lasting 81 minutes, with 12 stops including Public Square, Cleveland Arcade, Cleveland Mall and Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.
• Euclid Avenue: a 4.81 km walk lasting 115 minutes, with 10 stops including Terminal Tower, Playhouse Square landmarks, Trinity Cathedral and Mather Mansion.
• North Coast Harbor: a 2.48 km walk lasting 79 minutes, with 7 stops including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, USS Cod and Great Lakes Science Center.
• University Circle: a 3.94 km walk lasting 112 minutes, with 11 stops including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.
• Ohio City and the Flats: a 4.7 km walk lasting 104 minutes, with 7 stops including Hope Memorial Bridge, the Guardians of Traffic and West Side Market.
• E-Line Trolley: an 8.6 km bus route lasting 37 minutes, with 11 stops through downtown Cleveland.
• Euclid Avenue by Bike: an 8.7 km bike route lasting 44 minutes, with 8 stops between the Cleveland Cultural Gardens and Playhouse Square.

Each story plays as you reach the place, at your own pace: no group and no schedule. Narration is available in 11 languages, so you can explore Cleveland independently while the app explains the sights around you.

Download Neywo and discover Cleveland on foot, by trolley or by bike. You can also continue exploring Ohio, the United States, or nearby cities such as Akron, Columbus and Toledo.