A green city park in Salt Lake City with people on the lawn

Things to Do in Salt Lake City

Temple Square, the Natural History Museum of Utah, Red Butte Garden, Liberty Park, and the Great Salt Lake anchor the city's attractions. The Guide keeps a plain, dated record of what's open and worth knowing, updated daily.

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Salt Lake City at a Glance

Founded July 24, 1847

199,723 residents at the 2020 census

Elevation 4,226 ft

Capital of Utah, seat of Salt Lake County

Winter Olympics host in 2002 and 2034

Family and Free Options

The directory below covers museums, parks, and landmarks across the city. Family things to do and free things to do are both common searches, so the guide groups entries with those readers in mind rather than assuming a single kind of visitor.

Temple Square, the Natural History Museum of Utah, and Red Butte Garden

Temple Square, the Natural History Museum of Utah, and Red Butte Garden anchor the city's attractions.

Temple Square sits in downtown Salt Lake City. It is free to visit and open daily.

The Natural History Museum of Utah and Red Butte Garden are both on the University of Utah campus, a short drive east of downtown. Both suit a family visit.

Getting Around the List

Places tagged only "Tourist attraction" with no second category are not part of this directory (the site has no place carrying that bare tag). Every entry below is reached through its more specific category, such as museum, park, or historical landmark.

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Featured image for “Millcreek Canyon”

Mill Creek Canyon, listed on Google as Millcreek Canyon, cuts east into the Wasatch Range from the Mount Olympus bench of Salt Lake City. The road leaves Wasatch Boulevard at 3800 South and climbs past picnic grounds and trailheads into the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The Salt Lake Ranger District manages the canyon, and Salt Lake County books its 10 group

Millcreek Canyon

Featured image for “Great Salt Lake State Park”

The park sits on the south shore of Great Salt Lake at 13312 West 1075 South in Magna, a straight run west from downtown Salt Lake City on I-80. Utah State Parks directs drivers to take exit 104, turn left at Saltair onto the frontage road, and follow the signs to the entrance station. The park website warns that the

Great Salt Lake State Park

Featured image for “Antelope Island State Park”

Antelope Island State Park sits about 41 miles north of Salt Lake City in Davis County. From downtown Salt Lake City, drive north on Interstate 15 to Exit 332, then head west on Antelope Drive to the park entrance gate in Syracuse. The park itself starts 7 miles further west, across the Davis County Causeway, which is the only public

Antelope Island State Park

Featured image for “Snowbird”

Snowbird is a year-round ski and summer resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon, in unincorporated Salt Lake County about 27 miles from downtown Salt Lake City. SR-210 is the only road in or out, and the resort sits 6 miles up the canyon at 9385 Snowbird Center Drive. Snowbird describes the trip as roughly a 45 minute drive from downtown. The

Snowbird

Featured image for “Bonneville Shoreline Trail”

The Bonneville Shoreline Trail traces the bench that ancient Lake Bonneville left along the Wasatch Front, and the Salt Lake City section runs 13.5 miles from North Salt Lake to Parley’s Canyon. That bench sits at roughly 5,100 feet, the highest level the lake reached about 15,500 years ago, and it rides locally as much as 200 feet higher where

Bonneville Shoreline Trail

Featured image for “Big Cottonwood Canyon”

Big Cottonwood Canyon opens off Wasatch Boulevard at 7000 South in Cottonwood Heights, southeast of downtown Salt Lake City, and State Route 190 climbs about 15 miles past Solitude and Brighton to Silver Lake. Driving the byway is free. The Forest Service charges only at five designated fee areas: Mill B and the S Curves and Donut Falls in summer,

Big Cottonwood Canyon

Featured image for “Abravanel Hall”

Abravanel Hall is the home of the Utah Symphony, sitting on South Temple in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City. The concert hall opened in 1979 and hosts classical music, pops concerts, films, lectures, and corporate gatherings across a season that runs alongside the Symphony’s own calendar. It stands next to the Salt Palace Convention Center and a short

Abravanel Hall

Featured image for “Eccles Theater”

On Main Street in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City, the Eccles Theater opens into a five story glass lobby lit by distinctive chandeliers, with colorful balustrades and a striking terrazzo floor underfoot. An outdoor terrace runs the length of the building, giving visitors a place to step outside before a show or at intermission and take in views

Eccles Theater

Featured image for “Delta Center”

Delta Center is the indoor arena that anchors downtown Salt Lake City, home to Utah Jazz basketball, the city’s NHL team, and a steady calendar of touring concerts, family shows and combat sports events. On a basketball night the seating bowl wraps close to the court, while hockey nights reconfigure the ice and boards under the same roof, changing the

Delta Center

Featured image for “Red Butte Garden and Arboretum”

Red Butte Garden and Arboretum sits in the foothills at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon, on the University of Utah’s east campus in Salt Lake City, immediately next to the Natural History Museum of Utah. Opened in 1985 and designated the University’s official arboretum, it covers about 100 acres: roughly 21 acres of themed gardens, including the Children’s Garden,

Red Butte Garden and Arboretum

Featured image for “Salt Palace Convention Center”

The Salt Palace Convention Center is downtown Salt Lake City’s home for conventions, trade shows and large meetings, standing directly across from Temple Square in the heart of the city. If you are here for a convention or trade show, this is the building the whole event usually revolves around, from the exhibit hall floor to breakout sessions to a

Salt Palace Convention Center

Featured image for “Loveland Living Planet Aquarium”

Loveland Living Planet Aquarium is the aquarium for the Salt Lake City area, and it sits in Draper, about twenty miles south of downtown rather than in the city itself. The most direct route from Salt Lake City is a straight run south on I-15 to the Draper exits, and the aquarium is also reachable without a car through UTA

Loveland Living Planet Aquarium

Featured image for “Natural History Museum of Utah”

The Natural History Museum of Utah occupies the Rio Tinto Center, a striking building set into the hillside on the University of Utah’s upper campus in Salt Lake City. Its architecture is part of the experience: the museum is organized as a descending route, so you move down through the galleries rather than doubling back through the same halls. Utah’s

Natural History Museum of Utah

Featured image for “Utah Museum of Fine Arts”

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is the state’s art museum, housed in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City. Its permanent collection spans many centuries and world regions, and the museum pairs those long standing holdings with temporary exhibitions that rotate throughout the year, so the galleries do not

Utah Museum of Fine Arts

Featured image for “Church History Museum”

The Church History Museum is a free museum in downtown Salt Lake City, standing just west of Temple Square and north of the Family History Library. Inside, art, artifacts, and interactive media trace the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members’ role in settling the Salt Lake Valley. Exhibits are self-guided, so visitors

Church History Museum

Featured image for “Cathedral of the Madeleine”

The Cathedral of the Madeleine stands on South Temple Street as one of Salt Lake City’s most recognizable landmarks, a working Catholic parish and cathedral that welcomes visitors as well as worshippers. Step inside and the space opens into a richly decorated interior, with stained glass windows, detailed stonework, and a hushed, contemplative atmosphere that rewards a slow look around.

Cathedral of the Madeleine

Featured image for “Museum of Illusions”

Museum of Illusions sits on Rio Grande Street in downtown Salt Lake City, a short walk from The Gateway. It is worth knowing what kind of museum this is before you go: there are no paintings hung on walls or artifacts in glass cases here. Instead, the space is built around illusion rooms, interactive installations, and optical illusion displays, including

Museum of Illusions

Featured image for “Utah State Capitol”

The Utah State Capitol is a working seat of government on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake City, and it is also open for public visits nearly every day it is in operation. The Utah Legislature’s House and Senate chambers sit inside, alongside the Hall of Governors and rotating exhibits that trace Utah’s history and culture through art, artifacts, and architecture.

Utah State Capitol

Featured image for “Temple Square”

Temple Square is a 35-acre campus in downtown Salt Lake City that brings together historic buildings, landscaped gardens and visitor centers around the Salt Lake Temple, and it is maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Google lists the site as a historical landmark, museum, religious organization and tourist attraction, and that mix shows up across the

Temple Square

Featured image for “Gilgal Sculpture Garden”

Gilgal Sculpture Garden sits mid block in the East Central neighborhood of Salt Lake City, hidden behind the houses and businesses that line 500 South. It was envisioned, designed, and created by Thomas Battersby Child Jr., a masonry contractor who began work in 1945 and kept building until his death in 1963. The official garden history describes it as Utah’s

Gilgal Sculpture Garden

Featured image for “Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum”

Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum fills more than 60,000 square feet across multiple floors at The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City, with hands-on galleries reachable by elevator. Exhibits include the Stillson River Railroad, where kids explore trains and the history of transportation, and I Dig Dinos, where they excavate fossils and try on the role of paleontologist. The Kids Eye

Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum

Featured image for “Clark Planetarium”

Clark Planetarium is a Salt Lake County run science museum and planetarium at The Gateway, the open air shopping and dining center in downtown Salt Lake City. The building works on two tiers, and understanding that split is the key to planning a visit. Its exhibit floors, more than 10,000 square feet across three levels, are free to walk through

Clark Planetarium

Featured image for “City Creek Center”

City Creek Center covers two city blocks in downtown Salt Lake City, with access from Main Street, South Temple, 100 South, State Street and West Temple. It is a shopping center, but the reason to walk it is the design. A 1,200 foot recreation of the south fork of City Creek runs down the middle of the property, tracing the

City Creek Center

Featured image for “Tracy Aviary at Liberty Park”

Tracy Aviary at Liberty Park is a dedicated bird sanctuary that sits inside Liberty Park in Salt Lake City, though it is not part of the free park itself. Liberty Park is open to the public at no cost, with its pond, gardens, and walking paths, but the aviary occupies its own eight-acre, ticketed grounds within that larger park, so

Tracy Aviary at Liberty Park

Featured image for “Utah’s Hogle Zoo”

Utah’s Hogle Zoo sits on 42 acres at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, just east of downtown Salt Lake City, where the collection is organized into habitat areas rather than a straight row of cages. Wild Utah greets visitors near the entrance, and the loop continues through the African Savanna, Primate Forest and Great Apes habitat, Asian Highlands, High Desert

Utah’s Hogle Zoo

Featured image for “This Is The Place Heritage Park”

This Is The Place Heritage Park is easiest to understand as several attractions built onto one large property in Salt Lake City. Spread across more than 450 acres, its center is Heritage Village, a reconstructed pioneer settlement of more than fifty historic homes, shops, and buildings, where costumed interpreters lead hands-on activities such as rope making and candle dipping. A

This Is The Place Heritage Park

Featured image for “Gallivan Center”

Gallivan Center is a free public plaza in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City, and its character changes completely with the seasons. Built by the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City and completed in 1993 on what was once known as Block 57, the three-acre space takes its name from a former publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune and

Gallivan Center

Featured image for “Utah State Fairpark”

Utah State Fairpark sits on 65 acres on the west side of Salt Lake City, in the Fairpark neighborhood near the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The fairgrounds have hosted Utah’s official state fair since 1902, when the site opened as Agriculture Park, and six historic buildings with natural brick and hardwood floors still anchor the grounds today. For one

Utah State Fairpark

Featured image for “Capitol Theatre”

Capitol Theatre opened in 1913 as a vaudeville house and later showed movies, well before the building was restored into the performing arts venue that anchors this stretch of downtown Salt Lake City today. The lobby and auditorium still carry the ornate, turn of the century character of that era, with rich red and gold finishes and a Byzantine style

Capitol Theatre

Featured image for “Liberty Park”

Liberty Park covers 100 acres in the Central City neighborhood of Salt Lake City, about two miles southeast of downtown, with the main address at 600 Harvey Milk Blvd. The city calls it Salt Lake City’s oldest and second largest park. The ground was farmland and a grist mill before the city bought it from Brigham Young in 1881 for

Liberty Park

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Questions About Things to Do in Salt Lake City

Temple Square and Liberty Park are both free to visit and open daily. The Great Salt Lake shoreline is also free and reachable from the city.