90 Best Sights in Seattle, Washington

Several beach parks and green spaces front the lake along Lake Washington Boulevard; Madrona Park is one of the largest. Lifeguards are on duty in the summer, and young swimmers have their own roped-in area, while teens and adults can swim out to a floating raft with a diving board. The trail along the shore is a great jogging spot. Grassy areas encourage picnicking; there are grills, picnic tables, phones, restrooms, and showers. From Downtown, go east on Yesler Way about two miles to 32nd Avenue. Turn left onto Lake Dell Avenue and then right; go to Lake Washington Boulevard and take a left.

Gospel-music fans are drawn to the home of the state's largest Black congregation. The church's first gatherings began in 1889; back then, its prayer meetings were held in homes and in a store. The church, a designated official Seattle landmark, was incorporated in 1903, and after a number of moves, settled in its current simple but sturdy brick building. Eighteen stained-glass windows, each with an original design that honors a key Black figure, glow within the sanctuary. Beneath the bell tower, James Washington's sculpture The Oracle of Truth, a gray boulder carved with the image of a lamb, is dedicated to children struggling to find truth.

MOHAI—short for the Museum of History and Industry—anchors the southern edge of Lake Union inside the striking 1942 Naval Reserve Armory, once a training base for WWII recruits. The space itself feels like a love letter to Seattle’s inventive streak: the vast atrium soars with suspended planes, boats, and classic cars, all drawn from the museum’s deep collection of artifacts. The ground floor houses the Bezos Center for Innovation, an engaging, hands-on gallery where kids (and adults who think like them) can explore the city’s legacy of creativity, from Boeing to biotech. The overall effect is both nostalgic and forward-looking—a place that celebrates how Seattle’s restless energy keeps shaping the world.

Given Ballard’s long history as a home for Scandinavian immigrants, it’s fitting that this is the neighborhood’s one major museum. Inside the spacious, modern building, galleries are dedicated to Nordic history, culture, and the immigrant experience—you’ll see everything from ancient axes to futuristic fish-leather sneakers. Most exhibits have a broad scope, but the one dedicated to immigration focuses on Seattle, displaying hundreds of homey artifacts, most donated by Ballard residents. There’s also a gallery showing temporary exhibits, usually contemporary art with a Nordic theme, and out back a shady garden holds a century-old sauna and a reconstructed Viking ship.

The biggest and most popular beach park in the Bellevue park system, this large park has a big swimming beach, seasonal lifeguards, a fishing dock, nature trails, restrooms, and a large grassy area with picnic tables. The playground is a favorite, thanks to a train that tots can sit in and older kids can climb on and hop from car to car.

Focusing on telling the history and stories of African Americans in the Northwest, this museum housed in an old school building tells stories through a diverse collection of well-curated and insightful photos, artifacts, and compelling narratives. Past exhibits have included Xenobia Bailey: The Aesthetics of Funk, and The Test: The Tuskegee Project about the first African American aviation units in the U.S. military to serve in combat. One gallery is dedicated to the work of local artists.

This shady, picturesque cobblestone park is the geographical heart of the historic neighborhood. On first Thursdays, it's home to a variety of local artisans setting up makeshift booths. Grab a sandwich or pastry from Caffe Umbria and people-watch from one of the colorful café tables dotting the tree-lined square. Note that this square is a spot where homeless people congregate; you're likely to encounter more than a few oddballs. The square is best avoided at night.

Part of Pike Place Market’s recent expansion, Old Stove—which is brewed on-site—might be the kid-friendliest taproom in town. Choose from 24 drafts at the award-winning brewery, which can be paired with pub fare like burgers, sandwiches, and pretzel bites, or oysters and salmon dip, if you're feeling fancy. Try to nab a seat on the patio or by the window (especially at sunset) so you can watch ferries glide across Puget Sound from the 80-foot west-facing window that frames Elliott Bay and the mountains.

You'll probably see the line of tourists before the sign itself (which is brown, rather than the more commonly recognized green sign) when you head to the First Starbucks on the historic streets of Pike Place Market. The globally renowned coffee company opened up its first shop in 1971—although fun fact: the actual first Starbucks opened up a few blocks away and is no longer standing. This isn't the spot to go if you're looking for a quick caffeine fix, but it might be worth the wait if you're interested in exploring more about Starbucks' history.

This aptly-named beach is a perfect spot to find some quiet among the energy of the city. Dip your feet in the refreshing water, skip some rocks across Elliot Bay, and take a seat on the fallen driftwood, where you can enjoy a snack and the sights of ferries and sailboats passing by.

Marvel at the lustrous 53 acres of rugged forest at Schmitz Preserve, about 15 blocks east of Alki Point. The Preserve was donated to the city in pieces between 1908 and 1912, and features one of the remaining stands of old-growth forest in Seattle.

This 22,00-square-foot "museum" is a big play area divided into themed sections—there's a mountain to climb, a toy train track, a puppet theater, a craft workshop full of art supplies. The basic idea is to give kids an engaging setting and let their imaginations have free reign. The museum's stated target age group is 10 and under, but it's aimed primarily at the younger end of that range.

Hop aboard the Seattle Great Wheel at the end of Pier 57 for one of the city’s most scenic rides. Rising 175 feet above Elliott Bay, this gleaming Ferris wheel—just steps from Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium—offers a slow, 15- to 20-minute spin with panoramic views of the skyline, the Olympics, and Mount Rainier (on clear days, of course). Each climate-controlled gondola fits six comfortably (up to eight if some are kids), and most groups get a cabin to themselves. After dark, more than 500,000 LED lights transform the wheel into a glowing waterfront landmark with weekend light shows in summer. Advance tickets are worth it—you’ll still wait in line, but not for long.

This formal garden occupies a 3.5-acre plot within the Washington Park Arboretum, but it’s its own entity, managed by the city (with much help from dedicated volunteers). It was designed in the late 1950s by landscape architects from the Tokyo Parks Division as a traditional “walking garden”: visitors follow a set path that takes them past a pagoda, a koi pond, a waterfall, and a teahouse, interspersed among the trees, shrubs, flowers, and rocks. Tuesday through Friday, volunteers lead tours twice a day. Most weeks, usually on weekends, you can take part in a 40-minute tea ceremony in the teahouse. Reservations are required; the $15-dollar charge (separate from admission) includes tea and snacks.

More arcade than museum, this space puts a collector's life's work in play: more than 50 pinball games line up on the two floors, all included in the price of admission. The games rotate out frequently, and the collection includes machines from as far back as 1934 right up to recent releases. Entrance includes unlimited games, so take a break to chat with the staff, who can point out interesting features like the cigarette holders on the older machines. Children under 7 are not permitted to play.

Seward Park, about 15 minutes from the C.D., is a relatively undiscovered gem on the shores of Lake Washington. The 300-acre park includes trails through old-growth forest, mountain views, eagles' nests, a 2½-mile biking and walking path, a native plant garden, art studio, and a small swimming beach. For an informative self-guided tour of the park, available as a printable PDF, visit  www.seattleolmsted.org/self-guided-tours. Turn your park visit into a bike tour on select summer weekends for Bicycle Weekends, when Lake Washington Boulevard (south of Mount Baker Beach to the entrance of Seward Park) is closed to motorized traffic from Friday evening to Monday morning. Check www.parkways.seattle.gov.

This community-funded gallery embraces the ethos that art is for the people. It's a central initiative in Seattle's local art scene. Slip Gallery's frequently shifting exhibits are eclectic, modern, and thought-provoking, featuring timely art often tied to political, climate, and social justice themes. From drag shows and community art days to Belltown Art Walk and a magazine launch, Slip occasionally hosts events in this creative space.

Prints, masks, drums, sculptures, baskets, and jewelry by local Native artists fill the space of this elegant Belltown gallery near Pike Place Market. Alaskan and Arctic art are also on display, including beautiful sculptural pieces carved from ivory, wood, and soapstone.

This elegant gallery will give you a real look at the best contemporary work of Northwest Coast and Alaska tribal members (and artists from these regions working in the Native style). Three floors exhibit wood carvings, paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces from the likes of Robert Davidson, Joe David, Preston Singeltary, Susan Point, and Rick Bartow.

This 47,000-seat, open-air baseball stadium with a state-of-the-art retractable roof is the home of the Seattle Mariners. If you want to see the stadium in all its glory, take the 60-minute pre-game tour or 75-minute behind-the-scenes tour, which brings you onto the field, into the dugouts, back to the press and locker rooms, and up to the posh box seats. Tours depart from the Team Store on 1st Avenue, and you purchase your tickets there, too (at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled tour).

If it weren't for a small sign on the sidewalk and the faint whiff of cocoa in the air, you'd never know that Fremont has its own artisanal chocolate factory with daily tours. Since it opened in 2005, Theo has become one of the Northwest's most familiar chocolate brands, and is sold in shops across the city. Theo uses only organic, fair-trade cocoa beans, usually in high percentages—yielding darker, less sweet, and more complex flavors than some of their competitors. Stop by the factory to buy exquisite "confection" truffles—made daily in small batches—with unusual flavors like basil-ganache, lemon, fig-fennel, and burnt sugar. The friendly staff is generous with samples. You can go behind the scenes as well, with informative, hour-long tours; reservations are highly recommended, especially on weekends and during peak tourist season.

First Hill's renovated cultural center hosts scores of events in its spacious yet intimate Great Hall. Chief among them are talks and panel discussions with leading politicians, authors, scientists, and academics. Book launches, drag and musical performances, and documentary screenings are among the other events on previous line-ups. 

The UW campus is worth a stroll just to admire the handsome architecture and landscape design. The main plaza, cheekily known as Red Square due to its brick pavement, is a good hub for taking in some highlights. In the northwest corner, the building to the left of the three slender towers is Odegaard Library, home to the visitors center, where you can pick up a campus map. On the square’s east side is its most striking building, Suzzallo Library, an example of “collegiate Gothic” design that would fit in at Oxford or Cambridge (or Hogwarts). It’s open to the public and worth going inside to check out the ornate, church-like Reading Room, with its vaulted ceiling and stained glass.

To the right of Suzzallo as you face it from the square is Rainier Vista, a downward-sloping, third-of-a-mile walkway that perfectly frames Mt. Rainier on the horizon. It’s Seattle’s best-composed view of the mountain.

Left of Suzzallo, a sidewalk leads to the Quad, four academic buildings surrounding a large lawn with 29 cherry trees. When the trees blossom in April, people from far and wide throng here to revel in the beautiful scene.

This 45-acre expanse, sitting at highest point of Capitol Hill, is Seattle's most elegant park. Famed landscape architects the Olmsted Brothers contributed to the 1904 design, and you can feel their influence in everything from the flowerbeds to the lily ponds to the old-school streetlights—and, more than anything, in the sweeping, carefully framed view to the west, which takes in the cityscape, Elliott Bay, and the Olympic Mountains. 

The park is a great place to stroll or jog, have a picnic, let the kids loose on the playground, or take in a summer concert at the amphitheater. For the fullest experience, plan on going into the park's three distinctive structures. The most prominent is the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Nearby, you can climb inside a 75-foot-tall brick water tower, dating from 1906. Views from its observation deck are even better than those from the ground. The third building, the Victorian-style Volunteer Park Conservatory, also merits an extended visit. Its magnificent collection of tropical plants is divided into five adjoining greenhouses: the Bromeliad House, the Palm House, the Fern House, the Seasonal Display House, and the Cactus House. If you're in Seattle on a dreary winter day, this is the place to go to beat the doldrums.

This 350-acre park three miles northeast of the University District is mainly used by locals, who come here to jog on the trails, launch boats onto Lake Washington, and let their dogs run free in Seattle’s largest off-leash area. Several unique characteristics can make it worth a visit. From the 1920s through the ‘70s, the park was a naval air base; if you’re interested in aeronautics history or architecture, check out the historic district, where the base’s art deco and Colonial Revival buildings from the ‘30s and ‘40s remain (now repurposed in various ways, including a roller derby arena). If you’re a dog lover, you can find joy watching happy pups swim at the off-leash dog beach. And grunge rock fans like to make a pilgrimage to the park’s northern corner, where, when the breeze is blowing in the right direction, you can hear the Sound Garden that inspired the iconic Seattle band’s name. (The instillation is part of a neighboring NOAA facility that’s not open to the public.)

A tranquil spot to take a break in the middle of the city or eat a takeout snack, this small garden with a few cafe tables surrounds a 22-foot artificial waterfall that cascades over large granite stones.

The newly opened Waterfront Park—a 20-acre space stretching from Belltown to Pioneer Square—was completed in the summer of 2025, bringing a sense of unity and community to Downtown Seattle's formerly fragmented waterfront. Bike lanes, playgrounds, and native plants are all part of the new Waterfront Park, which provides a community space along the piers for events, social gatherings, walking along the water, and simply catching the sunset over the Olympic Mountains and Elliott Bay.

Located in West Seattle's business district are 11 murals depicting local history. Some are trompe-l'œils, like the realistic 1918 street scene, The Junction, which appears to vanish into the horizon. Another mural is taken from a postcard of 1920s Alki. The most colorful is The Hi-Yu Parade, with its rendition of a Wizard of Oz–theme float reminding locals of a 1973 summer celebration. In 2019, a new Mural Alley off the 4700 block of California Ave SW added five new murals to the collection, and the original 11 underwent restoration between 2018 and 2020.

Ninety-two acres are divided into bioclimatic zones, allowing many animals to roam freely in habitat areas. A jaguar exhibit is the center of the Tropical Rain Forest area, where rare cats, frogs, and birds evoke South American jungles. The Humboldt penguin exhibit is environmentally sound—it uses geothermal heating and cooling to mimic the climes of the penguins' native home, the coastal areas of Peru. With authentic thatch-roof buildings, the African Village has a replica schoolroom overlooking animals roaming the savanna; the Trail of Vines takes you through tropical Asia; and the Northern Trail winds past rocky habitats where wolves, mountain goats, a grizzly bear, and otters scramble and play. The Zoomazium is a nature-themed indoor play space for toddlers and kids under eight, and the Woodland Park Rose Garden is also worth a stroll. Check out Woodland Park's ZooTunes lineup of summertime outdoor concerts at www.zoo.org/zootunes (tickets sell out in advance, so plan ahead).

Though it used be considered an off-the-beaten-path gem, the Center for Wooden Boats is now a major feature of Lake Union Park. The center gives free boat rides on the lake every Sunday; they sail on the hour from 1 to 3 pm, but the first-come, first-served slots tend to go fast, so you should queue up at the Center as soon as it opens. You may also rent a variety of small craft—pedal boats, canoes, rowboats, and small sailboats—to explore the lake on your own (lessons are available if you don't have much experience). Rates are $25–$50 per hour. Check out the events calendar for weekend workshops or to schedule one-on-one sailing lessons.