Things to do in Fort Worth

Landmark · North of downtown

The preserved livestock exchange district — brick pens, the Livestock Exchange Building, Billy Bob's, and a longhorn herd driven down Exchange Avenue twice a day.

Local tip: The cattle drive at 11:30 and 4 is genuinely worth ten minutes and is free. Then leave the main strip: the White Elephant Saloon and the honky-tonks off Exchange are where people actually go, and Thursday nights are better than Saturday.

Culture · West of downtown, around Camp Bowie

The Kimbell Art Museum in Louis Kahn's 1972 vaulted building with a Renzo Piano pavilion beside it, the Modern Art Museum in Tadao Ando's concrete-and-water pavilions, and the Amon Carter's American collection by Philip Johnson — all within a few hundred metres.

Local tip: General admission to all three is free; only special exhibitions are ticketed. Go to the Modern on a Friday evening and sit in the café over the reflecting pond — it is the best room in the city and costs nothing.

Neighborhood · Immediately south of downtown

The city's most walkable district — a medical campus surrounded by brick storefronts, bungalows and the densest concentration of independent restaurants, bars and coffee in Fort Worth.

Local tip: Friday on the Green in Magnolia Green Park and the ArtsGoggle street festival in autumn are the two events that will introduce you to more people in one evening than three months of trying. Park once and walk.

Nature · Along the Trinity River, north and west of downtown

Roughly a hundred miles of paved riverside trail radiating from downtown along the West, Clear and Main forks of the Trinity, with the long-running Panther Island flood-control and redevelopment project at the confluence.

Local tip: Rockin' the River — tubing on the Trinity with live music on the bank — is the local summer institution. For the rest of the year the trail from downtown out to the Stockyards is the flattest, shadiest run in the city.

Landmark · Downtown, south end

Philip Johnson's 1974 concrete water park — an aerating pool, a quiet meditation pool and the Active Pool, a stepped descent into a roaring basin that feels genuinely unsafe and is the point.

Local tip: Go at dusk in summer when the temperature drops and the noise is at its best. It is two blocks from the convention centre and most visitors never find it.

Nature · Cultural District

Texas's oldest botanic garden, with a seven-acre Japanese garden of koi ponds, maples and a moon-viewing deck tucked into a former gravel pit.

Local tip: The Japanese Garden in late November is the one place in North Texas with genuine autumn colour, and it is quiet on weekday mornings. The Fall Festival weekend is lovely and rammed; go the week before instead.