3 Best Sights in Manchester, The Monadnocks and Merrimack Valley

The Currier maintains an astounding permanent collection of works by European and American masters, among them Claude Monet, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, John Marin, Andrew Wyeth, and Childe Hassam, and it presents changing exhibits of contemporary art. The museum also arranges guided tours of the nearby Zimmerman House, completed in 1950, and the nearby Kalil House, built five years later. These are New England's only Frank Lloyd Wright–designed residences open to the public. Wright called these sparse, utterly functional living spaces "Usonian," a term he used to describe several dozen similar homes based on his vision of distinctly American architecture.

In one of the most architecturally striking Amoskeag Mills buildings, state-of-the-art exhibits depict the region's history from when Native Americans lived here and fished the Merrimack River to when the machines of Amoskeag Mills wove cloth. The museum also offers lectures and walking tours, and has a child-oriented Discovery Gallery. There's a very good book and gift shop, too.

The world's largest permanent LEGO installation at minifigure scale, depicting Amoskeag Millyard and Manchester as they looked a century ago, is the star attraction at this hands-on science lab and children's museum. The mind-blowing exhibit, covering 2,000 square feet, is made up of about 3 million LEGO bricks. It conveys the massive size and importance of the mills, which ran a mile on each side of the Merrimack. The museum also contains touch-friendly interactive exhibits and offers daily science demonstrations.