Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
dioramas (with a muskrat ecosystem mock-up) in 1890; today, its “Old Milwaukee” street
life construct is quite possibly Milwaukee's most-visited tourist spot. The museum's mul-
tilevel walk-through Rain Forest of Costa Rica, featuring its own 20-foot cascade, wins
kudos and awards on an annual basis. Among the catacombs of displays on archaeology,
anthropology, geology, botany, ethnography, and more are its jewels of paleontology: the
world's largest dinosaur skull and a 15-million-year-old shovel-tusk elephant skeleton ob-
tained from the Beijing Natural History Museum.
The museum constantly reworks exhibits to allow some of its six million-plus pieces in
storage to see the light of day. The
Live Butterfly Garden
has become the most popular
exhibitwiththegeneralpublic(andespeciallywiththisauthor'srelatives).The$17million
Dome Theater and Planetarium
—Wisconsin's first IMAX theater—is a big deal, as it is
theonlyplace onearth tohavesuchadvanced computer projection systems. Be suretotake
walking shoes.
Marquette University
Though the university's namesake was not particularly enamored of the Great Lake coast-
line, Jesuit
Marquette University
(Wisconsin Ave., 414/278-3178,
www.marquette.edu
)
was founded in 1881 and christened for the intrepid explorer Jacques Marquette. The uni-
versity even has bone fragments purportedly from the Black Robe, Father Marquette him-
self.
The primary attraction here is the
St. Joan of Arc Chapel
(generally open 10am-4pm
daily, from noon Sun., may be closed weekends when school is out), an inspiring, five-
century-old relic from the Rhone River Valley of France. Transported stone by stone, along
with another medieval chateau, it was reassembled on Long Island in 1927 by a railroad
magnate; the French government put the kibosh on cultural relocation after this. It was lov-
ingly redone bysome ofthe nation'spremier historic architects andrenovators andremains
the only medieval structure in the Western Hemisphere where Mass is said regularly. In a
perhaps apocryphal story, St. Joan is believed to have kissed one of the stones during the
war between France and England, and that stone has been said to be colder than its sur-
rounding neighbors ever since.
Another treasure of architecture here is the Brobdingnagian Gothic
Gesu Church,
built
in 1894. The vertiginous heights of the spires are enough, but the gorgeous stained glass,
in the shape of a rose divided into 14 petals, is equally memorable. Starting in summer
2012,thechurchunderwentitsfirstrestoration(polishingthosecoppercherubs,water-seal-
ing every lousy little crack) in some 120 years.
