65 Best Sights in Baltimore, Maryland

With 32 stories, Baltimore's World Trade Center, designed by I.M. Pei's firm, is the world's tallest pentagonal structure. The 27th-floor "Top of the World" observation deck allows an unobstructed view of Baltimore and beyond from a height of 423 feet.

The Aberdeen Proving Ground is a 75,000-acre U.S. Army installation on the Chesapeake Bay, about 30 mi northeast of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. On its premises is the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum, one of the world's foremost military museums. If you thought that the Sherman tank in your hometown's square was fun, wait until you see the largest collection of armored fighting vehicles in the country—230 at last count, spread over 25 acres. A huge 16-inch American gun from World War I is on display, as well as the first surface-to-air missile, devised by the Germans in 1945 along with "Anzio Annie," the giant Nazi railroad cannon used to shell Allied beachheads. The collection of small arms includes a 15th-century matchlock—a musket whose powder ignites from a slow-burning wick.

Launched in 1854, the USS Constellation was the last—and largest—all-sail ship built by the U.S. Navy. Before the Civil War, as part of the African Squadron, she saw service on antislavery patrol; during the war, she protected Union-sympathizing U.S. merchant ships from Confederate raiders. The warship eventually became a training ship for the Navy before serving as the relief flagship for the Atlantic Fleet during World War II, finally arriving in Baltimore in 1955 for restoration to her original condition. You can tour the USS Constellation for a glimpse of life as a 19th-century navy sailor, and children can muster to become Civil War–era "powder monkeys." Recruits receive "basic training," try on replica period uniforms, participate in a gun drill, and learn a sea chantey or two before being discharged and paid off in Civil War money at the end of their "cruise." Purchase single admission to the Constellation or combined admission to the two other Historic Ships and restored lighthouse. At this writing the ship will head to drydock to undergo repairs from October 2014 to March, 2015.

The city's oldest cemetery is the final resting place of Edgar Allan Poe and other famous Marylanders, including 15 generals from the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Dating from 1786, the cemetery was originally known as the Old Western Burying Grounds. In the early 1850s, a city ordinance demanded that burial grounds be part of a church, so a building was constructed above the cemetery, creating catacombs beneath it. In the 1930s, the schoolchildren of Baltimore collected pennies to raise the necessary funds for Poe's monument. Tours of Westminster Hall (which include the Burying Ground and Catacombs) are offered from April through November every first and third Friday at 6:30 pm and every Saturday at 10 am.

This Baltimore institution was organized in the 1880s as a way for destitute women, many of them Civil War widows, to support themselves in a ladylike fashion through sewing and other domestic handiworks. To this day you can still purchase handmade quilts, embroidered baby clothes, sock monkeys, and many other arts and crafts.