Start from 62 curated places around Cleveland, OH, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Cordelia
A downtown East 4th dining room doing wood-fired, ingredient-driven New American cooking that put Cleveland on national best-new-restaurant lists. It is the splurge-dinner pick that still feels like a neighborhood restaurant rather than a hotel showpiece.
Larder Delicatessen and Bakery
An Ohio City deli with Eastern European and Jewish roots, house-curing its own pastrami and baking the rye it sits on. Lunch counter by day with a James Beard pedigree; the line moves and the sandwiches are built to share.
Trails & outdoors
Edgewater Park
A Lake Erie lakefront park just west of downtown with a swimming beach, a hilltop overlook, and a flat paved promenade with the city's best skyline-over-water view. The default close-in waterfront walk for anyone staying near the center.
Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve
A reclaimed-fill peninsula on the East Side lakeshore with an easy loop through young woods and grassland that is one of the region's top urban birding spots. Quiet, flat, and a different lakefront experience from the busy west-side beach.
Things to do
Playhouse Square
The largest performing-arts center between New York and Chicago, a cluster of restored 1920s theaters downtown hosting Broadway tours, concerts, comedy, and dance under a giant outdoor chandelier. The anchor evening-out venue.
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
A mirrored, faceted black building in University Circle with no permanent collection, running rotating contemporary shows and installations. A compact 60-to-90-minute stop and a sharp counterpoint to the encyclopedic art museum nearby.
Landmarks & sights
West Side Market
Cleveland's 1912 public market in Ohio City, a tile-and-brick hall packed with multi-generational meat, produce, and bread stands plus an arcade of prepared-food vendors. It is where locals actually shop, not a curated tourist food hall, and the immigrant lineup runs Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and more under one Guastavino-tiled ceiling.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
The I.M. Pei glass pyramid on the Lake Erie shore holding the genre's deepest artifact collection, from handwritten lyrics to stage costumes. Plan a half day for the lower-level film and the rotating special exhibit, which is usually the strongest part.