Start from 17 curated places around Topeka, KS, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
The White Linen
Downtown Topeka's fine-dining standard-bearer, a small room doing monthly-changing French-American menus and tasting dinners built around Kansas ingredients. It is the city's special-occasion table, ambitious and seasonal. The dinner to plan an evening around.
Chez Yasu
A classic French restaurant in an elegant setting, plating boeuf bourguignon, sea bass and other continental staples for lunch and dinner. It is the old-school dress-up alternative downtown, a taste of France on the plains. A quietly refined meal.
Trails & outdoors
Lake Shawnee
An 1,100-acre lake park southeast of downtown wrapping sandy beaches, gardens and miles of trail around the water. It is the city's outdoor playground, good for a shoreline walk, a paddle or a wander through the botanical gardens. Flat, green and endlessly usable.
Kaw River State Park
A pocket of woods and bluffs on the Kansas River right at the edge of downtown, with forested trails for walking, running and mountain biking. It is a genuine slice of nature minutes from the capitol, a quick escape into the trees. Shady and surprisingly wild for its location.
Things to do
Evel Knievel Museum
A slick, immersive museum devoted to the daredevil's life and jumps, with restored motorcycles, his famous rig and a stomach-flipping jump simulator. It is far more fun and polished than you would expect, a genuine surprise in downtown Topeka. A blast for kids and nostalgic adults alike.
Topeka Zoo
A compact, well-run zoo in Gage Park with a tropical rainforest dome, big cats and a giraffe feeding deck, an easy and beloved family outing. Its size makes it manageable in a couple of hours without wearing out small legs. A reliable hit with kids.
Landmarks & sights
Kansas State Capitol
The tallest state capitol in the country, a French Renaissance dome you can actually climb, hauling up nearly 300 steps into the cupola for a view over the city. Inside, John Steuart Curry's fierce John Brown mural is one of the great works of American political art. Free tours and the dome climb make it the city's centerpiece.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park
The former segregated school at the heart of the Supreme Court case that ended legal school segregation in America, preserved as a national park with powerful interactive exhibits. It is among the most important civil-rights sites in the country, and Topeka's most significant landmark. A sobering, essential visit.