Cleveland
Discover Cleveland
A concise introduction to Cleveland, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Cleveland sits at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river on the southern shore of Lake Erie, and it spent the twentieth century as one of the great American manufacturing cities. The industry that built it also set the river on fire in 1969 — an event embarrassing enough that it helped produce the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, and the river is now clean enough to kayak.
That wealth left an unusual concentration of institutions for a city of this size. The Cleveland Museum of Art is free and holds one of the strongest collections in the country; the Cleveland Orchestra is widely rated among the best anywhere and plays at Severance Hall and, in summer, at Blossom. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is on the lakefront, sited here because a Cleveland disc jockey is generally credited with popularising the term.
The centre is compact and walkable, with Public Square at the middle, the West Side Market — a 1912 market hall still full of butchers and bakers — across the river in Ohio City, and the restaurant and gallery districts of Tremont and Detroit-Shoreway nearby. Little Italy sits below the museums in University Circle. Winters are grey and snowy off the lake; summer and early autumn are the seasons to come.