The Most Beautiful Places in Illinois
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Illinois are Cloud Gate, Robie House and Chicago Cultural Center. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Illinois is prairie country, flat and fertile, and its beauty is largely made by architects. Chicago rebuilt itself after the Great Fire of 1871 and became the birthplace of the skyscraper, and the city and its suburbs went on to host some of the defining houses of the twentieth century, from Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School to the glass pavilions of Mies van der Rohe.
Robie House on Chicago's South Side is the purest example of the Prairie style, with long low roofs and bands of art glass that echo the horizon of the plains. Farnsworth House, set by the Fox River at Plano, takes the opposite path: a single glass room raised on white steel columns above a floodplain meadow.
In the Loop, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, a mirror-polished steel form nicknamed the Bean, reflects the skyline of Millennium Park, and the Chicago Cultural Center, built as the city's first central library, holds a great Tiffany glass dome. North of the city in Wilmette, the Bahá'í House of Worship rises in nine sides, its dome covered with intricate tracery in white concrete.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud Gate | Sculpture | |
| 2 | Robie House | Manor house | |
| 3 | Chicago Cultural Center | Library building | |
| 4 | Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American Continent | Temple | |
| 5 | Farnsworth House | Manor house |
01 Cloud Gate
United States · 4 km from Chicago41.883° N 87.623° W
Image by Michelle-Maria from Pixabay Cloud Gate is Anish Kapoor's giant polished-steel bean in Millennium Park, and the first thing to know is that the nickname stuck despite the artist: he called "The Bean" completely stupid before eventually making his peace with it.
Did you know? Each of the 168 plates is about 10 mm thick and weighs roughly 450 to 900 kg, and they were cut so precisely that none needed trimming on site.
02 Robie House
United States · 7.2 km from Chicago41.790° N 87.596° W
grego1402 · CC BY 2.0 The Robie House looks as if it had been pressed flat against the Chicago ground: long bands of thin Roman brick, rows of art-glass windows and roofs that shoot out far beyond the walls on steel cantilevers. Completed in 1910 for the manufacturing executive Frederick C.
Did you know? Wright ordered custom thin bricks and had the horizontal joints raked deep while the vertical joints were filled flush, so the walls read as long horizontal lines.
03 Chicago Cultural Center
United States · 4.1 km from Chicago41.884° N 87.625° W
Image by hnguyenvu from Pixabay Behind a restrained limestone front on Washington Street in the Chicago Loop hides one of the most lavish interiors in the United States.
Did you know? Completed in 1897 for nearly $2 million, the building has masonry walls about three feet thick, faced with Indiana limestone over a granite base.
04 Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American Continent
United States · 3.2 km from Evanston42.074° N 87.684° W
MichaelDPhotos · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the lakeshore in Wilmette, just north of Chicago, stands one of the most unexpected buildings in America: a white, nine-sided temple whose dome looks as if it were spun from lace. It is the Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American continent.
Did you know? The lakeside site was found by the Chicago Bahá'í Corinne True, who chose it for its closeness to Lake Michigan and its natural elevation.
More about Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American Continent →
05 Farnsworth House
United States · 24.4 km from Aurora41.635° N 88.536° W
Victor Grigas · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Farnsworth House is little more than a white steel frame, two floating slabs and walls of glass, set in a meadow by the Fox River.
Did you know? Single-pane glass, a leaking roof, condensation and swarms of mosquitoes troubled Farnsworth, who recorded the flaws in her diary.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Illinois?
- On our list, Cloud Gate ranks first, followed by Robie House and Chicago Cultural Center.
- What is the Prairie style?
- It is an architectural style developed in the Midwest around Frank Lloyd Wright in the early twentieth century, with low horizontal lines, wide overhanging roofs and open interiors meant to suit the flat prairie landscape.
- Who designed Cloud Gate in Chicago?
- Cloud Gate was designed by the British artist Anish Kapoor and unveiled in Millennium Park in the mid-2000s. It is made of polished stainless steel plates welded into a seamless curved surface.
- Why does the Bahá'í House of Worship have nine sides?
- In the Bahá'í Faith the number nine symbolises completeness and unity, and every Bahá'í House of Worship is built with nine sides and nine entrances.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Illinois?
- In our collection, the places in Illinois are most often country houses (2), temples (1), sculptures (1) and libraries (1).
- How many places are on this list in Illinois?
- The list covers 5 places.