Cincinnati Discovery Guide

Cincinnati is the most European-feeling city in the American Midwest, and that is a consequence of German immigration, hills and a river.

Over-the-Rhine holds one of the largest collections of nineteenth-century Italianate architecture in the United States — several hundred blocks of it — and has gone from near-total abandonment to one of the more successful restorations anywhere, which is itself worth seeing.

Union Terminal is an Art Deco railway station of extraordinary quality, with the largest half-dome in the Western Hemisphere and two enormous glass mosaic murals, now holding the city’s museums.

The Ohio river setting is genuinely handsome, crossed by a Roebling suspension bridge that was a prototype for Brooklyn.

And the chilli is not what you think it is, which is part of the fun.

Union Terminal

A 1933 Art Deco station now holding the Cincinnati Museum Center: history, natural history, a children’s museum and an Omnimax, under a half-dome 55 metres across, with two vast glass tile murals showing the city’s industries. Worth going for the building alone.

Over-the-Rhine

Walk it. Findlay Market, Washington Park, the music hall, and blocks of Italianate tenements and breweries. Underground brewery tours take you into the lagering cellars beneath the streets.

The riverfront

The Roebling Suspension Bridge of 1866, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and the walk or ride across to Covington in Kentucky for the view back.

The hills

Eden Park, with the art museum — free — and a view down the Ohio; Mount Adams, a steep neighbourhood of narrow streets and bars above the park.

Eat

Cincinnati chilli at a parlour, a goetta breakfast, and a Graeter’s ice cream.

Cincinnati is older, more conservative and more settled than the cities around it, and it has a strong sense of its own particularity.

German inheritance

By 1900 a large share of the population was German or of German descent, and the influence is everywhere: the brewing industry, the singing societies, the food, the emphasis on civic institutions, and the neighbourhood name Over-the-Rhine, which refers to crossing a canal to reach the German quarter. Anti-German feeling in the First World War suppressed the language and renamed the streets, but the substrate remained.

Where are you from

Cincinnatians famously ask which high school you went to, which locates you socially and geographically in a way that outsiders find baffling and locals find efficient.

The river as a border

Kentucky is a few hundred metres away, and the city sits at the meeting of Midwest and Upper South. It was a free city across the river from a slave state, which shaped it profoundly.

Institutions

An old symphony, an old zoo, an old art museum, all endowed early and still going.

Over-the-Rhine’s revival displaced people. The neighbourhood was largely Black and very poor before restoration, and a great deal of that population has moved out. The history is worth knowing before you enjoy the restaurants, and supporting the long-standing businesses and the social enterprises there matters.

Findlay Market has traded since 1852 and is the oldest continuously operated public market in Ohio; its vendors are small businesses, and buying there is the most direct thing a visitor can do.

The river carries industrial and agricultural runoff and periodic sewer overflows after heavy rain; the city is spending heavily on separating its combined sewers.

Walk and use the streetcar, which is free within its loop and connects downtown to Over-the-Rhine.

The hill neighbourhoods have their own business districts; spreading spending there helps.

May, September and October are the best months: warm, dry, comfortable, with the hills green or turning and the festival calendar active.

June to August is hot and humid — the Ohio valley traps moisture and the heat index climbs — though the evenings and the riverfront are pleasant.

Late September is Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, one of the largest in the world outside Munich.

Opening Day in late March or early April is a genuine civic holiday here, with a parade, because the Reds are the oldest professional baseball team in the country.

December to February is cold and grey with some snow, and the museums and music hall carry the season.

Spring brings flooding risk along the river.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the city

Cincinnati is inexpensive for an American city of its standing, and the free art museum, free streetcar and cheap baseball make a modest budget go a long way. Sales tax is added at the till and tipping of 18 to 20 per cent is expected.