THE BIKES & BREWS TOUR IS HELD AT 2 P.M. SATURDAYS AND LAUNCHES FROM THE BIKE THE BURGH TOURS HEADQUARTERS NEAR THE DAVID L. LAWRENCE CONVENTION CENTER, DOWNTOWN. | PHOTO BY VIRGINIA LINN

There’s nothing like seeing a new city on foot. My husband and I have taken wonderful walking tours of Berlin, London (a Jack the Ripper tour, a tour on “Law in London” and a pub crawl), Prague, Lisbon and Charleston, South Carolina — plus ghost tours of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Savannah, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida.

Yet one of my favorites so far has been an architectural walking tour of Chicago — and I’m hoping to someday take a similar tour of Downtown, led by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation guides. At street level, our city architecture is every bit as varied and impressive, if not more so, than what Chicago has to offer. No wonder that, when our writer Ruby Siefken took the tour recently to include in our 2024 Visitors Guide, most attendees were from Pittsburgh. That report begins on page 17.

Our staff fanned out to take several local tours, also by boat and bike, to see what out-of-towners see when they come to the Steel City. We found that these tours are as interesting to those who have lived here for years as they are to visitors. The guides are knowledgeable and engaging, and we all learned something new.

The tours we took just scratched the surface of what’s available here. For example, the newest tour of Henry Clay Frick’s home Clayton, “Gilded, not Golden,” recently won the 2024 Leadership in History Award from the American Association for State and Local History. In late June, I took a “Views & Brews” tour, sponsored by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, that provided a rare look at the inside of a variety of condos. We also toured the Kaufmann’s Grand apartments and its incredible rooftop pool and basketball court, and it was interesting to see all the progress that’s been made in converting Downtown office buildings, warehouses and former department stores into housing.

For your next staycation, please consider taking a tour of your home city.