25 Best Sights in Calgary, Alberta

This 160,000-square-foot building resonates with the sounds of music and activity, drawing visitors up through five floors of acoustically and visually distinct exhibition, performance, and gallery spaces. You can unleash your inner rock star by jamming out on the tools of the trade, and build and test instruments made from everyday objects. It’s also home to a number of attractions, including the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame Collection.

In the foothills,10 km (6 miles) west of Calgary, is western Canada's largest outdoor family amusement park, which has been recently expanded. It includes live entertainment, miniature golf, a fishing pond, shops, and an RV park. Buy your tickets online to save money.

The focal point of this ornate building in the heart of Chinatown is the Dr. Henry Fok Cultural Hall, a building modeled after the Hall of Prayers in Bejing’s Temple of Heaven. The column details and paintings include 561 dragons and 40 phoenixes. The center houses a cultural museum, an art gallery, a crafts store, an herbal-medicine store, and a 330-seat Chinese restaurant.

Also known as the New City Hall, the angular, mirrored walls of this building reflect several city landmarks, including the old City Hall, a stately 1911 sandstone building that houses the mayor's office and other city offices.

This is Calgary’s most iconic Downtown building. The views from this 191-meter (626-foot) scepter-shaped edifice take in the city's layout, the surrounding plains, and the face of the Rockies rising 80 km (50 miles) to the west. A "torch" that crowns the tower is lighted for special events and occasions. The tower top also holds the revolving Sky 360 Restaurant and Lounge, which serves dinner nightly and weekend brunch. It also boasts Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and a gift shop.

One of the sites of the 1988 Winter Olympics, Winsport operates this year-round attraction featuring a brand-new (2024) day lodge. Summer activities include mountain biking and mini-golf. In winter the slopes are open to the public for skiing and snowboarding and tubing; lessons are available. The new day lodge houses a food court, the Eighty-eight Bar and Grill, and a coffee shop, as well as the Olympic Hall of Fame.

Architecture buffs should plan a visit to Calgary’s newish central library. When it opened in 2018, it was one of Architectural Digest's most anticipated buildings of the year. The building’s curved surface is composed of hexagonal panels that give way to an expansive archway at the entrance, created entirely of western red cedar planks from British Columbia. Inside, six floors provide all the trappings of a modern, tech-enriched library, from a children’s library on the main floor to the Great Reading Room on the top floor, designed so Calgarians and visitors can ruminate over their books and computers in the glow of natural light.

This is Calgary’s oldest surviving public park and a shady respite from the frenetic energy of the Beltline. A cenotaph and two statues memorialize Canadian soldiers who fell in various 19th and 20th century wars. At the east end is Central Memorial Library, a national historic site, which was constructed in 1910 with financial support from the Carnegie Foundation.

Above the CORE Shopping Centre, this balmy 2½-acre enclosed tropical roof garden provides a welcome escape from the business of Downtown. It holds 20,000 trees and plants, nearly 2 km (1 mile) of lush walkways, a sculpture court, and a playground. Alberta's largest indoor gardens, which are reached by two glass-enclosed elevators just inside the 7th Avenue light-rail transit (LRT) entrance, have a living wall and numerous ponds with rainbow trout, koi, goldfish, and turtles. Art exhibitions are held here, and there's a stage for performances.

The fort was established in 1875 at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers by the North West Mounted Police. Designed to stop Montana whiskey traders from selling alcohol to the locals, it remained in operation until 1914. The Interpretive Centre here traces the history of the First Nations people, Mounties, and European settlers with the aid of artifacts, audiovisual displays, and interpretive walks. Deane House Restaurant, next to Fort Calgary, is one of Calgary’s best restaurants and a nice place to stop for lunch or dinner. It's the restored 1906 fort superintendent's house. The Hunt House, directly behind the restaurant, was built in 1876 and is believed to be Calgary's oldest building.

You can wander the Stampede Park grounds and visit the free Grain Academy, an interesting small museum in the Roundup Centre that proclaims itself "Canada's only grain interpretive center." There's a model-train display depicting the movement of grain from the prairies through the Rockies to Vancouver. There's also a working model of a grain elevator.

On 127 acres of parkland beside the Glenmore Reservoir, Heritage Park is Canada's largest living-history village. This accredited museum includes more than 200 exhibits, hundreds of costumed staff and volunteers, and 45,000 artifacts that re-create western Canadian life prior to 1914. You can visit an 1850s fur-trading post, a ranch, and an old town; ride on a steam locomotive or horse-drawn wagon; and cruise the reservoir on a stern-wheeler.

One of the few surviving examples of a grand sandstone prairie mansion, Lougheed House is the former residence of some of Calgary’s most influential citizens, including Peter Lougheed, premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985. Both a national and provincial historic site, Lougheed House hosts history and art exhibits and is surrounded by large and wonderful gardens that are worth exploring in the summer months.

Western Canada's largest military museum has a collection of memorabilia that depicts the history of Calgary-based regiments dating back to 1900.

Canada's second-largest naval museum focuses on the role of the prairie provinces in the navy.

With its bright red hue, webbed walls and tubular shape, the once-controversial Peace Bridge has become a cultural icon of Downtown that some have compared to a Chinese finger puzzle. The bridge crosses the Bow River just west of Prince’s Island Park, allowing pedestrians and cyclists to move back and forth between Downtown and the communities on the north side of the river. It provides ready access to Kensington.

Prince’s Island Park is a beautiful festival park that hosts the Calgary Folk Festival and the city’s Canada Day celebration. It’s easily accessible by foot or bicycle from either side of the river and offers a pleasant natural getaway from the city. Grab a picnic lunch at River Cafe and make a day of it.

A couple of blocks to the north of Kensington's major concentration of shops, bars, and restaurants is this large green space with big trees, a wading pool, and a playground for the kiddos. Grab a picnic lunch from one of the many great cafés in Kensington, plop down a blanket, and have yourself a picnic. In the evening, you can watch the lads play cricket or listen to live music on the small stage here.

Opened on the Stampede Grounds in 2024, the Sam Centre offers interactive exhibits (both permanent and changing) exploring the history of the Stampede and the people that have defined it. For the first time, Calgary has an attraction that tells the Stampede story year-round, and not just in July. Maisie Eatery sells pastries, sandwiches for both breakfast and lunch, coffee, and drinks every day.

Home of the world-famous Calgary Stampede, the park hosts a number of other events throughout the year. Part of the grounds, the BMO Centre, Big Four Building, and Agriculture Building host trade shows, and Boyce Theatre hosts theatre and small concerts.

This vibrant pedestrians-only shopping area is a National Historic District, and boasts dozens of stores, nightclubs, and restaurants on the ground floors of Calgary's oldest structures. The mostly sandstone buildings were erected after an 1886 fire destroyed most of the older buildings.

Interactive exhibits present the wonders of science in an entertaining way. Shows at the multimedia Discovery Dome, Alberta's largest indoor theater, combine computer graphics, motion-picture images, slides, and a superb sound system. The Children's Discovery Centre is designed for kids three to seven years old.

The first science center built in Canada in 25 years is now a city jewel. It houses a giant dome theater and a 6,500-square-foot digital immersion gallery that allows visitors to follow a storyline as they walk through a digital dream world. There’s also a sensory-rich area for younger children, where they can make music on a bubble piano (among other things).

Formerly Arts Commons, this complex was pieced together in the 1980s by incorporating the historic Calgary Public Building (1930) and the Burns Building (1913). Today it's one of Canada's largest arts complexes with five theater spaces and a state-of-the-art concert hall. There are also six resident companies—Alberta Theatre Projects, Arts Commons Presents, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Downstage, Theatre Calgary, and One Yellow Rabbit—and six gallery spaces. The $600 million modernization and expansion plan also includes connecting to Olympic Plaza.

The zoo, on St. George's Island in the middle of the Bow River, is one of Canada's largest, with more than 1,000 creatures from 119 species in natural settings. It is also one of Calgarians' most cherished institutions. The Canadian Wilds section replicates endangered Canadian ecosystems, and the Exploration Asia exhibit allows you to (safely) get up close to Amur tigers. Prehistoric Park, a Mesozoic landscape, displays 22 life-size dinosaur replicas. Destination Africa showcases two African ecosystems, the TransAlta Rainforest and the African Savannah, and has mixed-species exhibits of more than 100 animals, the largest indoor hippo immersion habitat in North America, and 84 plant species indigenous to the African continent.