Start from 21 curated places around Cumberland, MD, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Puccini Restaurant
Widely considered Cumberland's best restaurant — a wood-fired pizza and Italian kitchen set inside a converted Civil War-era hospital on Baltimore Street. The thin-crust pizzas emerge from an 800-degree wood-fired oven, the pasta is made in-house, and the room itself has the character that comes from genuinely old bones. This is where Cumberland takes visitors who need to understand the city's food scene in a single dinner.
Ristorante Ottaviani
A family-owned Italian restaurant that has served downtown Cumberland for years with a menu rooted in Abruzzo and central Italian traditions — not the Americanized red-sauce canon. The house-made pasta and the braised meat dishes are consistently praised; the wine list has more regional Italian depth than you'd expect from a city this size.
Trails & outdoors
Great Allegheny Passage - Cumberland to Frostburg
The official Mile 0 of the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage rail trail begins at the arch behind the train station in downtown Cumberland and climbs steadily 16 miles to Frostburg — following the historic Western Maryland Scenic Railroad tracks through mountain scenery the whole way. This segment is the trail's most dramatic and serves both day-hikers and long-distance cyclists.
C&O Canal Towpath - Cumberland Section
The flat, packed-dirt towpath that runs 184.5 miles along the Potomac River from Cumberland to Washington DC, following the canal's original mule-path. The Cumberland section is the terminus — a few miles along the towpath from Canal Place gives you the historic canal lock structures, milepost markers, and the quiet of the Potomac riverbank without committing to a longer trip.
Things to do
Western Maryland Scenic Railroad
The 32-mile round-trip excursion train between Cumberland and Frostburg is the single most memorable experience in the region — three and a half hours through mountain narrows and river valleys with live historical narration. The murder mystery dinner excursions on weekend evenings are the more theatrical option but both versions deliver on scenery.
Rocky Gap Casino, Resort & Golf
A full-service casino resort inside Rocky Gap State Park — the only gambling destination in western Maryland and also a base for hiking, swimming, and golf. The casino floor is small but functional; the resort's restaurants and spa are the more interesting visit for non-gamblers who want an amenity-rich option within the park.
Landmarks & sights
C&O Canal National Historical Park - Cumberland Visitor Center
The western terminus of the 184.5-mile Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, with a full-scale replica of a canal boat inside the Canal Place museum and interpretive exhibits on the mule-boat era of American transportation. This is where the great mid-Atlantic commercial corridor began, and the interpretive center does justice to the engineering story. Canal Place itself is a renovated 19th-century freight terminal complex worth wandering beyond the museum.
Western Maryland Scenic Railroad
A 32-mile round-trip excursion train that climbs 1,300 feet from downtown Cumberland to Frostburg through the Allegheny Mountain narrows and river valleys — the most dramatic rail corridor in the mid-Atlantic. The 3.5-hour trip includes live narration and a 1.5-hour layover in Frostburg. Murder mystery dinner excursions run on selected weekend evenings.