Tucked into a narrow rowhouse on a quiet Baltimore street, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum celebrates the life of perhaps the greatest figure in baseball history, born in the very building it occupies. Opened as a museum in 1974, the modest brick house honours the slugger known as the Bambino, whose towering home runs transformed the sport and made him an enduring American icon. George Herman Ruth was born in the upstairs bedroom of this house in 1895, in a working-class neighbourhood not f.....

The building that helped invent the Inner Harbor still runs the Mid-Atlantic meetings trade. The Baltimore Convention Center at 1 West Pratt Street opened in August 1979 - before Harborplace, before the National Aquarium - and its early success is widely credited with catalysing the waterfront renaissance that remade downtown Baltimore. A 151-million-dollar expansion completed in 1997 tripled the facility to 1,225,000 gross square feet, spanning a full superblock between Charles, Pratt, Conway a.....

A fixture of Baltimore's downtown nightlife, Baltimore Soundstage is a live-music venue and club at Market Place in the city's historic Power Plant district, a short walk from the Inner Harbor. Housed in a converted industrial building, it offers a flexible, general-admission space that has hosted a steady stream of touring bands, tribute acts, comedy and themed club nights since establishing itself as one of the area's busiest mid-sized rooms. The main room holds around a thousand people and i.....

Widely credited with sparking a revolution in stadium design, Oriole Park at Camden Yards is the home of the Baltimore Orioles and one of the most influential ballparks ever built. Opened in 1992 in the heart of downtown Baltimore, its retro-classic design rejected the multi-purpose concrete bowls of the previous era in favour of an old-fashioned, baseball-only park, and its success inspired a wave of similar ballparks across the country. The stadium seats around forty-five thousand spectators .....

Baltimore's 1962 Civic Center got a 250-million-dollar rebirth and instantly rejoined the A-list. CFG Bank Arena at 201 West Baltimore Street opened on 23 October 1962 as the Baltimore Civic Center, designed by AG Odell Jr. and Associates on the site of Old Congress Hall, where the Continental Congress met in 1776. The building carried six decades of city history: the NBA's Baltimore Bullets from 1963 to 1973, the Beatles in 1964, championship boxing, and successive identities as Baltimore Arena.....

Occupying a striking spot in the historic Power Plant building at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the Hard Rock Cafe Baltimore combines the chain's signature music-memorabilia formula with one of the city's most prominent waterfront settings. The building, a former generating station whose tall smokestacks remain a landmark, gives the cafe an unusually dramatic home among the shops, attractions and promenades that line the harbour. As with every Hard Rock, the interior doubles as an informal gallery .....

Frank Sinatra made one of his first appearances with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra on this stage in 1939 - and after 14 dark years, the theatre came back from the dead to host Broadway. The Hippodrome Theatre, at 12 North Eutaw Street in downtown Baltimore, opened on 23 November 1914 and reopened on 10 February 2004 as the centrepiece of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb - the era's premier theatre architect - for impresarios Pearce and Scheck, the 3,000-seat ho.....

Four NFL Hall of Famers learned their football on this field, in a stadium named not for a donor but for the student who started it all. Hughes Memorial Stadium - The Den - at 1700 East Cold Spring Lane on the Morgan State University campus in northeast Baltimore, opened on 16 October 1937 and remains one of the historic grounds of Black college football. The name honours William Alfred Carroll Hughes Sr., the 1897 alumnus who introduced football to Morgan by organising a team on a vacant lot; .....

The orchestra rehearsed in school gymnasiums while its home hall double-booked around it - so one man built the musicians a palace. The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, at 1212 Cathedral Street in Baltimore's Mount Vernon cultural district, opened on 16 September 1982 as the purpose-built home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with 2,443 seats in a boldly sculptural oval. The problem dated to 1969: conductor Sergiu Comissiona and executive director Joseph Leavitt raised the need for a new hal.....

The Bank has been Baltimore's Sunday cathedral since 1998, and it is mid-transformation into a year-round one. M&T Bank Stadium at 1101 Russell Street opened on 8 August 1998 as the home of the Baltimore Ravens, a 220-million-dollar HOK design completed in under two years beside Oriole Park at Camden Yards - the football half of the Camden Yards Sports Complex, funded through tax-exempt bonds, lottery-backed debt service and team money. Known first as Ravens Stadium and then PSINet Stadium throu.....