Garden of the West

There is no doubt that a trip to America will bring you up close and personal with some of the most impressive buildings in the world, and Chicago is no different in that respect. What Chicago can provide that not every city can lay a claim to is a welcome change from the concrete, and some green areas where you can take a break from the downtown shopping and traffic in a more peaceful setting. In fact, when Chicago was founded as a city in 1837, it chose as its motto “Urbs in Horto” – a city in a garden. This is something that the city makes a point of publicising to this day, with one of the nicknames for the state of Illinois being “the Garden of the West”.

The Chicago Park District has 552 parks which encompass more than 7000 acres of land and several wildlife sanctuaries. It is exactly the kind of city that any lover of nature would be delighted to visit. Chicago’s largest park, Lincoln Park, is visited by 20 million people every year. Rather than rest on its laurels, the city is adding more parks, and is looking to keep a green reputation that makes the residents of the city very proud to live there and the visitors extremely happy to return.

All of this is in addition to the ongoing projects to maintain and renew the city’s park structure, which is home to 16 natural lagoons and ten wildlife gardens. There are few cities in America or the rest of the world with such a reputation for the protection of nature, and this makes Chicago a city worth seeing.