9 Best Sights in Old Town/Chinatown, Portland

A few blocks from the related historical plaza in Waterfront Park, this excellent museum opened in an attractive new space in 2021 and pays homage to the dynamic Nikkei (Japanese emigrant) community that has thrived in Portland for generations. It presents engaging rotating exhibits that use art, photography, personal histories, and artifacts to touch on all aspects of the Japanese American experience in Portland and the Northwest, including the dark period during World War II of forced relocation to concentration camps situated throughout the U.S. West.

In a twist on the Joni Mitchell song, the city of Portland and private donors took down a parking lot and unpaved paradise when they created this wonderland near the Pearl District and Old Town/Chinatown. It's the largest Suzhou-style garden outside China, with a large lake, bridged and covered walkways, koi- and water lily–filled ponds, rocks, bamboo, statues, waterfalls, and courtyards. A team of 60 artisans and designers from China literally left no stone unturned—500 tons of stone were brought here from Suzhou—in their efforts to give the windows, roof tiles, gateways (including a "moongate"), and other architectural aspects of the garden some specific meaning or purpose. Also on the premises are a gift shop and an enchanting two-story teahouse, operated by local Tao of Tea company, overlooking the lake and garden.

On Saturdays from March to Christmas Eve, the west side of the Burnside Bridge and the Skidmore Fountain area hosts North America's largest ongoing open-air handicraft market, with some 300 vendors. If you're looking for jewelry, yard art, housewares, and decorative goods made from every material under the sun, check out the amazing collection of works by talented artisans on display here. Entertainers and food booths add to the festive feel. Be careful not to mistake this market for the food-centric PSU Portland Farmers Market, which also takes place on Saturday, on the other side of Downtown.

In this particularly striking section of Tom McCall Waterfront Park that's dotted with cherry trees that bloom brilliantly in early spring, take a moment to study the evocative figures cast into the bronze columns at the plaza's entrance. They show Japanese and Japanese-Americans before, during, and after World War II—living daily life, fighting in battle for the United States, and marching off to internment camps. Simple blocks of granite carved with haiku poems describing the war experience powerfully evoke this dark episode in American history.

Consider visiting the plaza in conjunction with the nearby—and related—Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center museum.

Local model makers created most of this museum's models of ships that once plied the Columbia River. Contained within the stern-wheeler steamship Portland, this small museum provides an excellent overview of Oregon's maritime history with artifacts and memorabilia. The Children's Corner has nautical items that can be touched and operated. The Portland is the last steam-powered stern-wheel tugboat operating in the United States, and volunteer-guided tours include the pilot house and engine room.  Occasional four-hour cruises on the ship are also offered, about once a month, in summer; the cost is $88.

Begun as a temporary exhibit on the city's Chinatown—more than 10% of Portland's population identified as Chinese American in the 1900s, making it the second-largest such community in the country—at the Oregon Historical Society Museum, this museum now occupies a 2,500-square-foot permanent space in the heart of Chinatown. Exhibits document the community's continuously important contribution to the city, including the vibrant Chinese American–owned businesses that have prospered here since Portland's founding, as well as art, music, food, and important aspects of the community. The museum also presents rotating art and history exhibits as well as occasional concerts, lectures, and oral-history presentations.

This unusually graceful fountain, built in 1888, is the centerpiece of Ankeny Square, a plaza around which the Portland Saturday Market takes place. Two nymphs uphold the brimming basin on top; citizens once quenched their thirst from the spouting lions' heads below, and horses drank from the granite troughs at the base of the fountain.

You can always find your way to Union Station by heading toward the huge neon "go by train" sign atop the 150-foot-tall Romanesque Revival clock tower that looms high above the building. Originally opened in 1896, the station's vast lobby area, with high ceilings and marble floors, is worth a brief visit if you hold any nostalgia for the heyday of rail travel in the United States. Amtrak trains stop here, and the old-school restaurant adjoining the station, Wilfs, is an elegant spot for a bite to eat or watching live jazz in the evening.