Chicago

The Potawatomi held this flat, marshy land where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan, at a short portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi basin. The first known permanent settler was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a trader of African descent, perhaps from Saint-Domingue, in the 1780s. The army built Fort Dearborn in 1803; it was destroyed in the War of 1812 and rebuilt. After the 1833 Treaty of Chicago the Potawatomi were forcibly removed west of the Mississippi. The town was organised in 1833 with about 200 people and incorporated as a city in 1837, and for decades it was the fastest-growing city in the world. The Illinois and Michigan Canal and the first railway opened in 1848, and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president here.

The Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 burned an area about four miles long, killed at least 300 people and left over 100,000 homeless. The rebuilding was the largest building boom in the nation's history, and in 1885 the Home Insurance Building became the first steel-framed high-rise. The Haymarket affair of 1886 and the Pullman Strike of 1894 marked bitter labour conflicts, and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 drew 27.5 million visitors. By 1900 most residents were immigrants or their children, and from 1910 the Great Migration brought Black southerners north.

The Prohibition years made the city's gangsters notorious. During the Second World War Chicago produced more steel than Britain. After 1950, when the population peaked at 3.6 million, suburbs drew residents away and steel jobs collapsed. Harold Washington became the first Black mayor in 1983. In the 2020s underfunded pensions pushed the city into a fiscal crisis, with a budget deficit near $1 billion in 2025.

Chicago's culture has left a mark far beyond the city. The Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, and blues, jazz, soul and gospel all have deep roots here; house music was born in Chicago clubs, and the city also gave birth to industrial music and has an influential hip-hop scene. Its theatre community created modern improvisational comedy, with The Second City, founded in 1959, launching generations of comedians. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago lead the classical scene, and the Art Institute is both a museum and an influential art school.

Architecture is a civic religion. The city gave its name to the Chicago School and was home to Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School, and its skyline runs from Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham to Mies van der Rohe's lakeshore apartment towers; public art by Picasso, Chagall, Miró and Calder stands in the Loop's plazas.

Neighbourhood identity is strong: Mexican Pilsen and La Villita, Puerto Rican Paseo Boricua in Humboldt Park, Greektown, Chinatown and a large Polish community with its own theatre and newspapers. The Pride Parade in June is one of the world's largest. Sport divides and unites the city — two baseball teams, the Cubs and White Sox, as well as teams in every other major league — and the Chicago accent, famous from The Blues Brothers, is a point of humour and pride.

Chicago had 2.74 million residents at the 2020 census, making it the third most populous city in the country, and its metropolitan area, often called Chicagoland, had about 9.62 million. The city is divided into 77 community areas and more than 200 informally defined neighbourhoods; the Loop is the business centre, and the North Side is the most densely populated residential section. Away from the lake, much of the city is built of brick bungalows from the early 20th century.

The economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14 per cent of the workforce. Chicago has the world's largest and most diverse market in financial derivatives, and is a hub for commerce, technology, logistics and the nation's railways; O'Hare is one of the world's busiest airports. Tourism is large too — nearly 57 million people visited in 2025.

Daily life is shaped by the lake and the weather: crowded beaches, the Lakefront Trail and street festivals all summer, and long indoor months in winter. The city's finances and pension debts, and violent crime concentrated in particular neighbourhoods, are long-running issues. The current mayor is Brandon Johnson.

Chicago has a handful of dishes all its own. Deep-dish pizza, said to have originated at Pizzeria Uno, is baked in a high-sided pan with the cheese under the tomato sauce. The Chicago-style hot dog is usually all-beef, on a poppy-seed bun, loaded with yellow mustard, bright pickle relish, onion, tomato wedges, a dill pickle spear and pickled sport peppers, and finished with celery salt — ketchup is frowned upon. The Italian beef sandwich is thinly sliced beef simmered in its juices and served on an Italian roll with sweet peppers or spicy giardiniera, a pickled vegetable relish; with a sausage added, it becomes a "combo".

Other local inventions come from the city's communities. The Maxwell Street Polish is a grilled or deep-fried kielbasa with grilled onions, mustard and sport peppers; the Puerto Rican-influenced jibarito uses flattened, fried green plantains in place of bread; and the "mother-in-law" is a tamale topped with chilli in a hot dog bun.

Beyond these, Chicago eats like the immigrant city it is: Mexican food in Pilsen and Little Village, Greek on Halsted Street, Chinese along Wentworth Avenue, Polish food for the city's large Polish community, and many restaurants of national reputation. The Taste of Chicago festival each summer and the Chicago Food Truck Festival showcase the city's signature dishes.