Lightscape at Chicago Botanic Garden

About This Event

The Botanic Garden's answer to a Midwest winter: a 1.3-mile illuminated trail through roughly half a million lights, drawing about 245,000 people over its run — and this year's edition reworks more than 80% of the installations rather than just switching the same displays back on.

The garden itself is younger than you'd guess for something this established: ground broke in 1965 and it opened to the public in 1972, built on nine man-made islands in a Cook County forest preserve. It's managed by the Chicago Horticultural Society, which actually predates the garden by more than eight decades — the society was founded in 1890 and spent most of that time without a permanent home of its own, only getting the Glencoe site built out into what exists today in the '60s and '70s. Lightscape itself is a much newer addition, now in its eighth year.

Worth knowing: pricing moves with demand — tickets run under $30 on off-peak dates and climb from there, so the Garden's own calendar of cheaper nights is worth checking if your date isn't fixed.