Things to Do in Salt Lake City, United States: Walking Guide

The best things to do in Salt Lake City include visiting Temple Square, exploring historic churches and mansions, discovering Utah’s museums, and following the city’s pioneer and multicultural history. Set beneath the Wasatch Mountains, Utah’s capital brings together religious heritage, civic landmarks, arts institutions, and distinctive stories from the state’s past. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Salt Lake City with 127 narrated places.

What to see in Salt Lake City

Temple Square and the Salt Lake Temple

Temple Square is the natural starting point for discovering Salt Lake City. Its centerpiece, the Salt Lake Temple, is a neo-Gothic landmark of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Construction took 40 years, and the temple was dedicated in 1893.

Its quartz monzonite came from Little Cottonwood Canyon, about 22 miles south of the site. Before the railroad became operational in 1869, oxen hauled the stones to the city. The masonry was fitted so precisely that the stones contain no mortar between them. Symbolic designs appear on the exterior, while the interior includes a baptismal basin supported by twelve oxen.

Temple Square also includes the Salt Lake Tabernacle and Salt Lake Assembly Hall. Nearby, the Church History Museum presents almost two centuries of Latter-day Saint history through art, documents, photographs, tools, clothing, and furniture. Its collection includes a chisel used to shape the temple stone and the printing press that produced the first edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830.

The Brigham Young Complex and Beehive House

The Brigham Young Complex brings together homes, offices, and buildings associated with Brigham Young’s religious and political leadership. The group includes the Beehive House, his family residence, and the Lion House, his official residence as church leader and governor of the Utah Territory.

Built in 1854, the Beehive House takes its name from the beehive sculpture on its roof. Honeybees symbolized industry and cooperation for early Latter-day Saints. The building later served as Utah Territory’s executive mansion and as a women’s boarding house. The Beehive House has been closed for renovation since 2023 and is expected to reopen in 2027.

St. Mark’s Cathedral

Known formally as the Cathedral Church of Saint Mark, St. Mark’s Cathedral has stood on 100 South since the nineteenth century. Its foundation stone was laid in 1870, and the Gothic Revival building was consecrated in 1874. Construction continued through 1903.

The cathedral is particularly notable for its stained glass, including four windows made by Tiffany Studios in 1916. Works by Charles Jay Connick and Franz Xaver Zettler are also part of the building. A fire destroyed much of the sanctuary in 1935, but the cathedral was restored according to its original design.

Cathedral of the Madeleine

The Cathedral of the Madeleine is the mother church of the Diocese of Salt Lake City and the only American cathedral under the patronage of Saint Mary Magdalene. Completed in 1909, it occupies a distinctive place in a city strongly associated with the Latter-day Saint faith.

Its land was gifted by Mormons, and Mormon volunteers provided significant support during construction. The exterior uses Neo-Romanesque sandstone in a cross-shaped plan, while the interior draws on Spanish Gothic inspiration through ceiling murals, icons, and stained glass. The cathedral also contains a Blessed Sacrament Chapel, a baptismal font, and the resting place of Bishop Lawrence Scanlan, the founding bishop of the diocese.

Historic churches and religious communities

Salt Lake City’s religious history extends across many traditions. First Methodist Episcopal Church, now known as First United Methodist Church, was completed in 1905 and designed by Frederick Albert Hale. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

Trinity A.M.E. Church is closely tied to the beginnings of the city’s Black religious community. Established in the 1880s, its congregation was Utah’s first Black congregation. Members initially met in homes and rented buildings before securing the property in 1907.

Mount Tabor Lutheran Church offers a different architectural story. The congregation began with Danish missionary work in Utah, and its current building, dedicated in 1965, is known as the round church. Its modern form reflects the growth of a Lutheran community first established in the early twentieth century.

Capitol Hill and the Museum of Utah

The Utah State Capitol complex connects the city’s political history with its museums and memorials. The Museum of Utah is the state’s official history museum, operated by the Utah State Historical Society. It also houses the state’s history research center and opened in June 2026 as Utah’s first official history museum.

The surrounding area includes the Mormon Battalion Monument, Memory Grove, White Community Memorial Chapel, Salt Lake City Council Hall, and historic homes such as the Woodruff-Riter-Stewart Home and William F. Beer Estate.

Utah’s museums and contemporary culture

Salt Lake City offers museums for different interests. The Natural History Museum of Utah focuses on Utah and the Intermountain West, with collections covering paleontology, botany, mineralogy, geology, biology, and cultural history. Its more than 1.65 million objects support research into the region’s natural world and living systems.

At The Gateway, Discovery Gateway is an interactive children’s museum built around hands-on learning. Exhibits include a giant marimba, a pint-sized town, sensory play areas, stop-motion animation, and comic-strip creation.

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art presents rotating exhibitions by local, national, and international artists across six gallery spaces. Its program has included sculpture, architecture, Abstract Expressionism, artist-designed miniature golf, and the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier program.

Sugar House Monument

The Sugar House Monument commemorates an early attempt to make the Salt Lake Valley more sustainable. In 1855, city leaders and early Latter-day Saint settlers tried to establish the first factory in the western United States to refine sugar from beets. The experiment failed, and Brigham Young ordered the mill to close that same summer.

The obelisk stands about 200 feet east of the original mill site. Its design includes a fifty-foot shaft topped by a light, figures representing the productive Salt Lake Valley, and a relief of the original sugar mill added in 1948.

Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts

The Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts offers a focused introduction to the creative traditions of Utah’s communities. Since 1987, it has been the permanent home of the Utah State Folk Arts Collection and is the only museum in the United States dedicated to displaying a state-owned collection of contemporary folk art produced by its residents.

Three permanent exhibition galleries and one temporary gallery present changing views of the artists and communities behind Utah’s folk arts.

Explore Salt Lake City with a free audio guide

Neywo’s Salt Lake City self-guided walking tour lets you discover the city at your own pace. The app has seven walking tours, one bus route, and one bike route, with stories covering 127 narrated places. Narration is available in 11 languages, and each story plays as you reach the place: no group and no schedule.

The walks range from 0.91 to 2.8 km and from 44 to 93 minutes, with between 6 and 11 narrated stops. The bus route along South Temple covers 3.5 km in 15 minutes and has 7 stops. The 300 South Bike Lane route covers 1.8 km in 9 minutes and has 5 stops.

Choose the route that suits your day, whether you want to focus on Temple Square, cathedrals and mansions, Capitol Hill, downtown arts venues, historic depots, civic landmarks, or South Temple. For more ideas across the state, explore Utah, or continue your journey through the United States and nearby cities such as Park City, Provo, and Moab.