10405 Best Sights in USA

At this small, white church, a quick stop off the highway, you can learn more about Father Damien and his work. It's a state historic site and place of pilgrimage. The door is often open; if it is, slip inside, sign the guest book, and make a donation. The congregation keeps the church in beautiful condition.

Built at the turn of the 20th century, this basilica has a copper dome modeled after the one atop St. Peter's in Rome. Inside is a collection of relics, statues, and European icons.

This museum has a celebrated collection of 19th-century American painting, in addition to fine pre-Columbian and German expressionist works (including many paintings and drawings by Max Beckmann). Over the years, the museum has acquired important works of early modernism by Matisse, Monet, Picasso, van Gogh, Degas, and other early 20th-century artists. Works by Anselm Kiefer, Franz Kline, Gerhard Richter, and Jenny Holzer are among the more recent acquisitions.

One block from the entrance to City Park, at the end of Esplanade Avenue, stands this cemetery, on an area of high ground along Bayou St. John. It opened in 1854 on the site of an old leper colony. Governor Galvez had exiled the lepers here during the yellow fever outbreak of 1853, but they were later removed to make room for the dead. The remains of Storyville photographer E. J. Bellocq are here, and the cemetery is notable for its neat rows of elaborate aboveground crypts, mausoleums, and carved stone angels. Many tour companies, including Save Our Cemeteries, offer tours that include St. Louis No. 3, but it's also perfectly safe to walk through and explore on your own.

The center, located in the southeast part of Forest Park, contains more than 600 hands-on exhibits on ecology, space, and humanity. You'll also find life-size animated dinosaurs and exhibits showcasing technology and the environment. The two main buildings of the Science Center are connected by a bridge over U.S. 40 (which contains radar guns to measure the speed of cars below).

Located in Forest Park, this is one of the country's best zoos and a leader in conservation efforts. Natural open-air habitats allow visitors excellent views of animals from the African savanna, including lions, tigers, elephants and zebras; curious giraffes have been known to stick their necks out to be petted by wide-eyed visitors. The zoo's "River's Edge" is an immersion exhibit that allows visitors to get close to such creatures as warthogs, wild pigs, black rhinos, bush dogs, giant anteaters, and aardvaks. There's also a children's petting area with goats, sheep and other animals.

Highlights here include a Seminole dugout canoe, pictures from the Hill Photographic Collection, and a life-size re-creation of the P. P. Cobb General Store. A room is also devoted to the U.S. Navy Amphibious Training Base of World War II, which was located on St. Lucie's beaches. A guided tour of the Gardner House (the 1908 home of the Register family), with furnishings typical of the period, is included in the price of admission.

Steeped in New York City history and shaded by graceful gingko trees, this somewhat-hard-to-find section of Leroy Street has 15 classic Italianate brownstone and brick town houses (1851–54). Novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote An American Tragedy at No. 16, and poet Marianne Moore resided at No. 14. (Robert De Niro later lived here for decades—in mid-2012 he sold it for $9.5 million.) The colorful (and corrupt) Mayor Jimmy Walker (first elected in 1926) lived at No. 6; the lampposts in front are "mayor's lamps," which were sometimes placed in front of the residences of New York mayors. This block is often used as a film location: No. 4 was the setting of the Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark. Before 1890, the James J. Walker Park, on the south side of the street near Hudson, was a graveyard where, according to legend, the dauphin of France—the lost son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette—is buried.

Once the hub of the edgy East Village, St. Marks Place is the name given to idiosyncratic East 8th Street between 3rd Avenue and Avenue A. During the 1950s, beatniks Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac lived in the area; the 1960s brought Bill Graham's Fillmore East ( 105 2nd Ave.) and the experimental Electric Circus nightclub (at Nos. 19–25 St. Marks), where the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead played. The shaved-head punk scene followed, and at No. 33, is where the punk store Manic Panic first foisted its lurid hair dyes on the world. At No. 57 stood the short-lived Club 57, which attracted such 1980s stalwarts as artist Keith Haring.

These days, there's not much cutting edge left. Some of the facades lead to luxury condos, and there are a number of global fast-food restaurants for ramen and dumplings. The block between 2nd and 3rd Avenues has turned into a bit of a global fast-food mecca, with boba tea shops and several Asian restaurants alongside stores selling cheap jewelry, smoking paraphernalia, and souvenir T-shirts. The cafés and bars from here over to Avenue A attract customers late into the night—thanks partly to lower drink prices.

The mother church of the Acadians and one of the country's oldest Catholic churches, this 1840 building was erected on the site of an earlier church. Inside is a replica of the Lourdes grotto and a baptismal font said to have been a gift from Louis XVI. Emmeline Labiche, who may have inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Evangeline," is buried in the small cemetery behind the church.

When the breezes calm, the park's second-largest lake mirrors the snowcapped granite peaks that line the St. Mary Valley. To get a good look at the beautiful scenery, follow the Sun Point Nature Trail along the lake's shore. The hike is 1 mile each way.

This fine Romanesque Revival building built in 1920 has a stunning series of stained-glass windows.

Glacier's largest visitor complex has a huge relief map of the park's peaks and valleys and screens a 15-minute orientation video. Exhibits help visitors understand the park from the perspective of its original inhabitants—the Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d'Orielle peoples. Rangers conduct evening presentations in summer, and the auditorium hosts Native America Speaks programs. The center also has books and maps for sale, backcountry camping permits, and large viewing windows facing the 10-mile-long St. Mary Lake.

St. Mary's Mission, established by Father Pierre DeSmet in 1841, was the first Catholic mission in the Northwest and the site of the first permanent non–Native American settlement in Montana. This historic site is run by a nonsectarian, nonprofit organization that encourages tour groups, school groups, and individuals to explore the home of Father Anthony Ravalli, an Italian priest recruited to the mission by Father DeSmet in 1845. Ravalli was also Montana's first physician and pharmacist. On the site are a photogenic chapel, a priest's quarters, a pharmacy, Father Ravalli's log house, and the cabin of Chief Victor, a Salish Indian who refused to sign the Hell Gate Treaty and move his people onto the Flathead Reservation. A burial plot has headstones bearing the names of both Native Americans and white settlers.

If the heat has you, and the kids are itching to get wet, head to this full-service water park on the mainland, where you can get an inner tube and relax floating down the Oasis lazy river, hurtle down Splash Mountain, or corkscrew yourself silly sliding down the Orange Crush.

One of Southeast's best-known landmarks, the onion-dome cathedral is so treasured by locals that in 1966, as a fire engulfed the building, townspeople risked their lives and rushed inside to rescue precious Russian icons, religious objects, and vestments. An almost exact replica of St. Michael's was completed in 1976. Today you can view what may well be the largest collection of Russian icons in the United States, among them Our Lady of Sitka (also known as the Sitka Madonna) and the Christ Pantocrator (Christ the World Judge), displayed on the altar screen.

Topped by a 186-foot steeple, St. Michael's is the city's oldest surviving church building. The first cornerstone was set in place in 1752, and through the years, other elements were added: the steeple clock and bells (1764); the organ (1768); the font (1771); and the altar (1892). A claim to fame: George Washington worshipped in pew number 43 in 1791. Listen for the bell ringers on Sunday morning before worship services.

It's a replica of St. Sophia's in Istanbul and an excellent example of new Byzantine architecture. It's also the home of a weeping icon that received national and international headlines in the 1970s.

Newly baptized Orthodox Natives and Siberian gold miners built what's now Southeast's oldest Russian church in 1894. Refurbished in the late 1970s, the onion-dome white-and-blue structure is a national historic landmark. Services sung in Slavonic, English, and Tlingit take place on weekends. A small visitor center and gift shop are located next door in the rectory.

This prominent house of worship is the largest Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States, seating approximately 2,400 congregants, and marked by double spires rising 330 feet. "St. Pat's," as locals call it, provides a calm and quiet refuge in the heart of buzzy Midtown, despite the throngs of tourists: the cathedral receives more than 5 million visitors annually.

The church dates 1858–79, but it was beautifully restored thanks to a major rehabilitation project completed in 2015. Highlights include the choir gallery's century-old organ, with its 7,855 pipes; the famous rose window, considered stained-glass artist Charles Connick's greatest work; and the ornately carved bronze double doors, each weighing 9,200 pounds. A modern depiction of the first American-born saint, Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, stands in front of the altar bearing her name. The church's Pietà sculpture is three times larger than the version at St. Peter's in Rome.

Daily masses are open and free to the public (check the schedule online) with the exception of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which is a ticketed event. Self-guided audio tours ($20 plus tax) are available daily 9 am to 5 pm and VIP docent-led tours Monday through Saturday at 10:30 am and 2 pm; advance purchase is recommended.

A stark exterior gives way to a far more ornate interior in the first church built in the American sector of New Orleans, intended to provide the city's Irish Catholics with a place of worship as distinguished as the French St. Louis Cathedral. The vaulted interior was completed in 1840 by local architect James Gallier, who moved here from Ireland in 1834. High stained-glass windows and huge murals, painted in 1841, enrich the interior.

If you've seen The Godfather, you've had a peek inside New York's first Roman Catholic cathedral—the interior shots of the infamous baptism scene were filmed here. Dedicated in 1815, this church lost its designation as the seat of New York's bishop when the current St. Patrick's opened uptown in 1879. The unadorned exterior of the cathedral gives no hint of the splendors within, which include an 1868 Henry Erben pipe organ. The interior dates from the 1860s, after a large fire gutted most of the original structure. The enormous marble altar surrounded by hand-carved niches (reredos) houses an extraordinary collection of sacred statuary and other Gothic exuberance. Candlelit tours of the church and its catacombs, along with Most Precious Blood Church, can be booked through  www.tommysnewyork.com.

Open since 1766, St. Paul's is the oldest public building in continuous use in Manhattan. The chapel is part of the Trinity Church Wall Street parish, and in addition to its historic architecture, it's surrounded by a churchyard where Revolutionary War heroes are buried. In more recent times, St. Paul's Chapel served as a makeshift shrine after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, where visitors from around the world sought solace and shared tokens of grief and support. After serving as a refuge where rescue and recovery workers could eat, pray, rest, and receive counseling through 2001–02, the chapel—which amazingly suffered no damage on 9/11—reopened to the public in fall 2002. The chapel is open for Sunday worship services and occasional interfaith prayer events.

Constructed in 1739, St. Paul's Church was the only building in town to survive the bombardment and conflagration of New Year's Day 1776; a cannonball fired by the British fleet remains embedded in a wall. An earlier church had been built on this site in 1641, and the churchyard contains graves dating from the 17th century. Get a free visitor parking pass in the church office.

This tiny oceanfront Roman Catholic chapel by Kahaluu Beach Park, with its crisp white-and-blue trim and old-fashioned steeple, sits next to the site of an ancient heiau (temple), now marked by a dry-stack rock wall. This is not the church's original location, however. In 1912, it was dismantled and carried here piece by piece from a site across from Magic Sands Beach. Masses are not currently being held here, and the chapel is not open to the public, although you may certainly take photographs of the exterior.

St. Peter's Church has been in continuous use since its first service on September 4, 1761. The brick Palladian-style building was designed by Scottish architect Robert Smith, also responsible for Carpenters' Hall and the steeple on Christ Church. William Strickland's simple steeple, a Philadelphia landmark, was added in 1842. Notable features include the grand Palladian window on the chancel wall, high-back box pews that were raised off the floor to eliminate drafts, and the unusual arrangement of altar and pulpit at either end of the main aisle. The design has been called "restrained," but what is palpable on a visit is the silence and grace of the stark white interior. In the churchyard lie Commodore John Hazelwood, a Revolutionary War hero; painter Charles Willson Peale; and seven Native American chiefs who died of smallpox on a visit to Philadelphia in 1793. A guide may be on hand Saturday from 11 to 1 and on Sunday from 1 to 3. Tours available on weekdays by appointment. 

The current brick church was built in the mid-1800s, and its tall, pointed steeple was added in 1870, but St. Peter's has existed here since 1680. Modified colonial style decorates the interior, colored by 16 stained-glass windows mostly depicting the story of Jesus. Eighteen markers in the churchyard identify significant graves, including those of three Delaware governors.

Founded in 1858, the church is a Gothic Revival structure with Tiffany-glass-style memorials and a turn-of-the-20th-century L.C. Harrison organ with magnificent hand-painted pipes.

Though this sandy stretch is technically in the city of Treasure Island, the city of St. Petersburg owns and maintains it. Due in part to a concession stand and playground, it's excellent for families. The beach here is extremely wide, near hotels, and great for volleyball. Amenities: food and drink; parking; showers; toilets. Best for: solitude; partiers; sunset; swimming.