Dallas, United States: Self-Guided Walking Tour

Looking for things to do in Dallas? The city brings together major museums, significant sites connected with American history, distinctive architecture, and lively cultural districts. Downtown, the Arts District, Fair Park, Oak Cliff, and Victory Park each reveal a different side of Dallas. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Dallas with 126 narrated places, so you can explore the city while listening to its stories.

Dallas is part of Texas, in the United States, and its attractions are spread across several neighborhoods. The best way to understand the city is to move between its museums, memorials, churches, performance venues, and residential landmarks.

What to see in Dallas

Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum

Dealey Plaza is one of Dallas’s most historically charged places. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza occupies the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository, overlooking Elm and Houston Streets. Its permanent exhibition examines the life, presidency, assassination, and legacy of John F. Kennedy through photographs, film footage, artifacts, oral histories, and interpretive displays.

The museum also preserves the southeast corner window area associated with the assassination. Stacked boxes have been recreated there behind glass, while nearby windows offer views over Elm Street, the grassy knoll, the pergolas, and the triple underpass. Together, the museum and plaza help visitors understand both the event and the physical setting in which it took place.

The Lee Harvey Oswald Rooming House

In Oak Cliff, the Lee Harvey Oswald Rooming House is another place connected with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald rented a room here for eight dollars a week beginning on October 14, 1963, registering under the name O. H. Lee. Two days later, he began working at the Texas School Book Depository, about two miles away.

Dallas Museum of Art

The Dallas Museum of Art is one of the main institutions in the Dallas Arts District. Its collection contains more than 24,000 objects, covering the period from the third millennium BC to the present. European art, African works, Egyptian sculpture, art from the Americas, and modern and contemporary pieces all form part of its broad collection.

The building has stood at this location since 1984 and provides 159,000 square feet of exhibition space. Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and John M. Y. Lee Associates, it is a substantial part of the museum experience. Changing exhibitions, educational programs, lectures, films, live music, and evening events add to its active cultural program.

Nasher Sculpture Center

Beside the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center combines modern and contemporary sculpture with gardens and natural light. Opened in 2003 on a 2.4-acre site, it was created to house the collection of Patsy and Raymond Nasher.

Renzo Piano designed the building, whose large interior windows allow daylight and shadows to interact with the sculptures. The center includes indoor galleries, an outdoor garden, an amphitheater, classrooms, and a restaurant. Its collection contains more than 300 works by artists including Constantin Brâncuși, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin.

Perot Museum of Nature and Science

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Victory Park makes nature, science, technology, and human discovery accessible through a hands-on experience for children and adults. Its building is especially distinctive: a large cube rises above a landscaped base, with a glass-enclosed escalator running along the exterior.

Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, the museum uses layered concrete surfaces, native planting, and a landscaped roof to suggest geological strata and the North Texas environment. The building opened to the public on December 1, 2012, after the merger of three earlier organizations. Inside, several floors of permanent galleries explore a wide range of scientific subjects.

American Airlines Center

American Airlines Center is a major indoor arena in Victory Park and the home of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and the Dallas Stars hockey team. It also hosts concerts and other live entertainment.

The arena opened in 2001 and was designed primarily under the direction of David M. Schwarz. Its broad brick façades and smooth arches give the building a distinctive exterior, while retractable seating, public art, and technological features allow it to adapt to different events. It was planned as the focal point of Victory Park, an urban commercial area intended to help revitalize Dallas.

African American Museum of Dallas

Located in Fair Park, the African American Museum of Dallas preserves and celebrates African American history, art, and culture. Its exhibitions explore the diverse narratives and creative expressions of Black communities in America.

Founded in 1974, the museum has operated independently since 1979. It also preserves significant collections connected with Bishop College. The building is shaped like a cross and faced in ivory-colored stone, with natural materials and design motifs reminiscent of pre-industrialized cultures of the African continent. The museum is open to the public free of charge.

Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

In the historic West End, the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum connects the history of the Holocaust with the continuing defense of human rights. Its permanent exhibition is divided into four wings: Orientation, Holocaust and Shoah, Human Rights, and Pivot to America.

The visit begins with a short film before moving through exhibitions on anti-Semitism, Hitler’s rise, Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, and the Holocaust itself. The Holocaust and Shoah Wing uses geography, original films, and testimonies from 68 local Holocaust survivors to present the history. The museum’s wider purpose is to encourage action against prejudice, hatred, and indifference.

Frontiers of Flight Museum

At Dallas Love Field, the Frontiers of Flight Museum explores aviation and space history, with particular attention to the Dallas and Fort Worth area. The collection traces the development of flight and space exploration through aircraft, artifacts, and vehicles.

Highlights include the Apollo 7 Command Module, a replica of a World War One Sopwith Pup biplane, artifacts from the German airship Hindenburg, and more than two hundred models of World War Two aircraft. The museum was founded in 1988 and is now housed in a one hundred thousand square foot building. It is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Affiliations program.

Fair Park and the African American Museum

Fair Park offers several places to explore, including the African American Museum of Dallas. Its cultural institutions and venues make the area an important part of Dallas’s heritage. The museum’s collections and exhibitions provide a focused way to learn about African American history, art, and cultural heritage in the city and in America.

The Power Station

In Exposition Park, The Power Station presents contemporary art inside a former Dallas Power and Light building constructed in 1920. The raw architectural character of the building is part of the exhibition experience, while the space’s garden creates a contrast between crisp architectural forms and informal, lush planting.

The Power Station is a not-for-profit space with an international program, including a summer exhibition and additional events throughout the year.

Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe

In the Arts District, Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe is the cathedral church of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas and the Mother Church of the local diocese. Its community began in 1869 as Sacred Heart Church, and the building was completed in 1872. The church became a cathedral in 1890.

The late-nineteenth-century building has a red-brick Gothic exterior and a sanctuary with white walls trimmed in oak. A recently added campanile, planned by the original architect Nicholas J. Clayton, now houses a carillon of 49 bells.

Cathedral of Hope

In Oak Lawn, Cathedral of Hope is a historically and predominantly LGBTQ Christian congregation. It is described as the world’s largest inclusive liberal Christian church with a primary outreach to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

The current cathedral building was completed in 1993, and its sanctuary can hold up to 1,200 worshippers. One of the most distinctive features is the 78-foot John Thomas Memorial Bell Wall, designed by Philip Johnson to commemorate victims of HIV and AIDS.

The Origami House

The Origami House, also known as the Barthel House, is a distinctive residence in Highland Meadows. Architect John Edgar Barthel designed it as his personal home in 1959. Its folded-plate roofline gives the building the appearance that inspired its name, while its relationship with the surrounding wooded landscape makes it an example of site-specific modernism.

Highland Meadows is a mid-century modern subdivision developed in the 1950s and officially named in 2006. The neighborhood is also sometimes called Sylvania Dells.

Dallas Zoo

Dallas Zoo, also known as the Dallas Zoological Park, occupies a 106-acre site in Marsalis Park, about three miles south of downtown Dallas. It is home to more than 2,000 animals representing 406 species.

Dating back to 1888, the zoo is the oldest and largest zoological park in Texas. One of its major developments is Giants of the Savanna, an 11-acre exhibit. With such a large site and collection, the zoo is a substantial attraction to explore at a relaxed pace.

Explore Dallas with a self-guided audio tour

A Dallas self-guided walking tour lets you explore the city without joining a group or following a fixed timetable. Neywo has six walking tours, one bus route, and one bike route in Dallas, with 126 narrated places in total. Narration is available in 11 languages.

The walks include:

• Dealey Plaza and the Day Dallas Changed: 3.58 km, 97 minutes, 10 stops.
• Downtown Dallas: Landmarks Old and New: 3.25 km, 85 minutes, 8 stops.
• The Dallas Arts District: Pei, Foster, Piano and Koolhaas: 2.32 km, 86 minutes, 11 stops.
• Fair Park: Art Deco Texas Centennial: 2.63 km, 80 minutes, 9 stops.
• Turtle Creek: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Theater: 1.97 km, 48 minutes, 4 stops.
• Oak Cliff: Oswald’s Room and the Texas Theatre: 4.82 km, 97 minutes, 5 stops.

There is also a 10-kilometre, 43-minute bus route with 5 stops, DART Route 9: From Dealey Plaza to the Texas Theatre, and a 2.9-kilometre, 14-minute bike route with 4 stops, Turtle Creek and the Katy Trail: Arena to Frank Lloyd Wright.

Download Neywo and explore Dallas at your own pace. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, with no group and no schedule, making it a practical free audio guide for discovering the city on foot, by bus, or by bike. You can continue exploring Texas with Fort Worth, Austin, or Galveston.