Things to do in Des Moines

Landmark · East side of the Des Moines River

A 23-carat gold-leafed central dome flanked by four smaller ones, on a hill directly above the East Village, with the State Historical Museum and the World War memorial on the same terrace.

Local tip: Free guided tours run on weekdays and the law library inside — spiral iron staircases and two galleries of leather spines — is the single best-looking room in Iowa. Walk down the hill into the East Village afterwards rather than driving between the two.

Food · Court Avenue district, Saturday mornings May to October

Around 300 vendors across several closed downtown blocks — one of the largest producer-only markets in the United States, and the closest thing Des Moines has to a weekly civic event.

Local tip: Go before 8:30 or after 11:00; the middle two hours are shoulder-to-shoulder. Park in a downtown ramp rather than circling — most are free on Saturdays — and come hungry, because the breakfast stalls are the point as much as the produce.

Culture · Western Gateway downtown, and Greenwood Park

An open, free, unfenced downtown park holding around thirty major sculptures — Plensa, Bourgeois, Kapoor, Abakanowicz — with the Art Center a couple of miles west in buildings by Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei and Richard Meier.

Local tip: Both are free, always, which still surprises visitors. The Art Center's three architects each added a wing in a different decade and the seam between the Pei and Meier buildings is worth standing in. Go to the sculpture park at dusk when Plensa's 'Nomade' is lit from inside.

Neighborhood · Between the river and the Capitol

Six or seven restored blocks of 19th-century commercial buildings below Capitol Hill — independent shops, coffee, restaurants and bars, and the densest walkable stretch in the state.

Local tip: This is where you take a visitor. Locust and East Grand are the two spines. It is also the one part of the metro where living without a car is genuinely workable, which is why the flats above the shopfronts let quickly.

Nature · Just south-west of downtown

A 167-acre lake with a lit, floating pedestrian bridge and a two-mile loop, opening straight into Water Works Park — around 1,500 acres of floodplain woodland along the Raccoon River, larger than Central Park.

Local tip: Run or walk the Gray's Lake loop at dusk when the Kruidenier Trail bridge lights come on and the skyline sits behind it — it is the postcard shot of Des Moines. Water Works Park beyond it is huge, quiet on weekdays and has proper trails; it is also the site of the infiltration gallery the city's drinking water comes from.

Nature · Madrid, about 30 minutes north of the city

A half-mile former railway bridge 13 storeys above the Des Moines River valley, framed by 41 steel frames that twist to evoke looking down a mine shaft, lit blue after dark.

Local tip: Ride out from Woodward or Slater in the late afternoon so you cross it at sunset and again after the lights come on. There is a bar at each end of the trail, which is not an accident. It is the best hour of cycling in Iowa and almost nobody outside the state knows it exists.