Calgary's Most Iconic Landmarks

The Calgary Tower rises from the corner of 9th Avenue and Centre Street, a slender concrete shaft that opened in 1968 as the Husky Tower, built to mark Canada's centennial and to anchor a downtown that was just beginning its oil-fuelled growth.

At roughly 191 metres it was for years the tallest structure in the city, and although a forest of glass office towers has since climbed higher around it, its tapered white form and glowing crown remain the instantly recognizable symbol of Calgary.

The public heart of the tower is the observation deck near the top, reached by a high-speed elevator that climbs the core in about a minute.

From here the view stretches across the grid of the prairie city to the west, where on a clear day the jagged wall of the Rocky Mountains stands sharp against the sky, and eastward over the flat expanse of the plains.

The signature thrill is the glass floor, a see-through section added in 2005 that lets you stand with nothing but transparent panels between your feet and the street far below.

Above the observation level sits Sky 360, a revolving restaurant that completes a full rotation over the course of a meal, so diners take in the whole panorama without leaving their seats.

The tower also lights its crown for civic occasions, and during the Calgary Stampede a natural gas flame burns at the very top, a bright orange plume visible across downtown that ties the landmark to the city's most famous celebration.

The Bow is the great crescent-shaped tower that curves along Centre Street in the heart of downtown, designed by the London firm Foster and Partners and completed in 2012.

At about 236 metres and fifty-eight storeys it was, on completion, the tallest office building in Calgary and in Canada outside Toronto, and its sweeping arc immediately reshaped the city's skyline.

The building's most striking feature is its structure worn on the outside: a diagonal steel grid, or diagrid, that wraps the glass facade in a pattern of enormous triangles and carries the loads that in a conventional tower would be hidden inside.

The curve is not merely sculptural, for the arc turns its concave face toward the south to gather winter sunlight, and sky gardens set within the building create shared atriums that break up the great height.

The result is a tower that is both an engineering statement and an unusually legible one, its logic visible to anyone in the street.

The Bow anchors a district of energy company headquarters and reads as a bold counterpoint to the boxier towers of earlier decades, proving that a corporate high-rise could take an expressive, almost gestural form.

From street level the curve seems to lean over you, and from a distance across the Bow River or from the Calgary Tower it stands out as a smooth glass sail among the rectangular blocks around it.

Stephen Avenue, officially 8th Avenue, is the pedestrian street that runs through the centre of downtown and forms Calgary's historic commercial spine, a designated National Historic Site.

Laid out in the 1880s as the young town's main street, it takes its name from George Stephen, the first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway whose line put Calgary on the map.

Many of its most handsome buildings date from the years after a destructive fire in 1886, when the town rebuilt in local sandstone quarried from the banks of the Bow River, earning Calgary the nickname Sandstone City.

The warm ochre facades of these late Victorian and Edwardian blocks, with their arched windows and carved detail, still line the avenue, now housing shops, restaurants, and bars behind their heritage fronts.

During weekday business hours the central blocks close to traffic and fill with office workers, buskers, and diners spilling onto patios.

The avenue ties together many of downtown's landmarks, running past the Glenbow Museum, the arts venues, and the base of the Calgary Tower, and it comes alive in a different way after dark and during festivals and the Calgary Stampede, when crowds throng its length.

Walking it slowly, with an eye on the upper storeys above the modern shopfronts, is the best way to read the layers of the city's history in stone.

Heritage Park Historical Village, opened in 1964 on the shore of the Glenmore Reservoir in the city's southwest, is the largest living history museum in Canada.

Spread over a large lakeside site, it recreates life in western Canada from the fur trade era through the settlement years and into the early twentieth century, using both original historic buildings moved to the park and faithful reconstructions.

Costumed interpreters staff the shops, homes, church, school, and businesses of a period prairie town, while an antique midway, a working blacksmith, and demonstrations of old trades fill the streets with the sights and sounds of another age.

A restored steam locomotive circles the grounds, and the paddlewheeler SS Moyie carries passengers on cruises around the reservoir, so the park is as much an experience to move through as a collection to look at.

The historical village is joined by Gasoline Alley, an indoor museum of vintage automobiles and petroliana that reflects the region's automotive and oil heritage, giving the park an all-weather draw.

Sprawling and immersive, Heritage Park rewards a full day of wandering, and its lakeside setting away from the downtown towers makes it feel like a genuine journey into the past rather than a display behind glass.

The Peace Bridge is the striking red and white pedestrian and cycling bridge that spans the Bow River just west of downtown, designed by the celebrated Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2012.

Its form is unmistakable: a single tube of interlacing steel that spirals in a helical lattice around a glass-roofed walkway, carrying people across the water without a single support in the river below.

The design was both practical and expressive, meeting the need for a clear span that would not obstruct the river or its ice flows while giving Calgary a piece of signature architecture at pedestrian scale.

Its bold colour, echoing the red of the Canadian flag, makes it glow against the water and the green of the riverbanks, and inside, the hexagonal glass panels of the roof cast patterned light along the deck as walkers and cyclists pass through.

Quickly embraced despite early debate over its cost, the bridge has become one of the most photographed structures in the city and a symbol of a downtown reconnecting with its river.

It links the office core and the Eau Claire district on the south bank with the leafy Sunnyside and Kensington neighbourhoods to the north, and it forms a key crossing in the network of pathways that thread along both sides of the Bow.