Denver's first purpose-built movie house became its favourite small stage. The Bluebird Theater at 3317 East Colfax Avenue opened on 11 September 1915 as the Thompson Theater, designed by Harry W. J. Edbrooke for grocer-druggist John Thompson as the city's first theater built specifically for motion pictures - a Renaissance Revival neighbourhood house with a terraced floor, a balcony and an ornate proscenium of dancing cherubs. Pharmacist Harry Huffman bought it in 1921 and gave it the Bluebird .....

A cornerstone of Denver's East Colfax Avenue, the Bluebird Theater is a historic venue that has reinvented itself many times since first opening in 1913. Built as an early cinema and later operating under various guises, the building was lovingly restored in the 1990s and reborn as one of the city's most beloved small music venues, retaining its vintage marquee and intimate character while becoming a fixture of the local live scene. The room is prized for its intimacy and atmosphere. With a cap.....

Beneath the flower beds lies a Victorian cemetery, above them rises a concrete-latticed jungle dome, and every summer a sunken lawn between the two becomes one of America's loveliest concert venues. Denver Botanic Gardens at 1007 York Street occupies 24 acres in the Cheesman Park neighbourhood, on ground that served as the Catholic section of the city cemetery established by Denver founder William Larimer in 1859. The Gardens organisation incorporated on 3 February 1951 as a consolidation of the.....

In the historic City Park east of downtown Denver, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science is one of the largest natural-history museums in the western United States and the principal natural-history institution of the broader Rocky Mountain region. The museum traces its origins to 1900, when the pioneer Colorado naturalist Edwin Carter's celebrated taxidermy collection (assembled from years of personal field work throughout the Rocky Mountain wilderness) was acquired by the City of Denver and put.....

The bar itself - the physical wooden bar - is older than the state of Colorado's telephone system: it was salvaged from an 1873 tavern in Golden that was the oldest continuously licensed drinking spot in the state. The Goosetown Tavern, at 3242 East Colfax Avenue across from the Bluebird Theater in Denver's Congress Park area, opened in September 1998 as a living museum of Colorado bar history that still books bands most nights. The backstory is a genuine rescue. The original Goosetown, built b.....

When the University of Denver's basketball teams outgrew the atmosphere of their 7,000-seat arena, they moved into the smaller gym next door - on purpose. Hamilton Gymnasium, inside the Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness at 2240 East Buchtel Boulevard on the DU campus, is the roughly 2,000-seat home of Pioneers volleyball and both basketball programs, prized precisely for the noise a compact room generates. The gym is part of the Ritchie Center, the gold-spired athletics cathedral completed.....

Vampire Weekend played here to 50 people, and the club printed its worst one-star Yelp review on a T-shirt. The Hi-Dive, at 7 South Broadway in Denver's Baker neighbourhood, is the city's definitive independent rock dive: a 260-capacity musician-owned club that has anchored the South Broadway strip since November 2003. The little blue building had music in it long before the name: as Seven South it hosted Mazzy Star, Neutral Milk Hotel and 311 through the 1990s, then spent two years as Deadhead.....

When 3 Kings Tavern died in the first pandemic summer, two owners of the Oriental Theater signed a lease within weeks - Denver's South Broadway strip was not going to lose the room. HQ, at 60 South Broadway in the Baker neighbourhood, opened in August 2020 in the former 3 Kings space and has since stacked up Westword Best of Denver awards, from Best New Club to Best Metal Venue. The inheritance mattered: 3 Kings Tavern spent 14 years as a pillar of Denver rock, and Scott Happel and Peter Ore - .....

Seventy-five people is a sold-out night - and half of Denver's favourite bands have played to exactly that. Lost Lake Lounge, at 3602 East Colfax Avenue, is the city's definitive dive-bar venue: a cabin-styled room on the old Colfax strip where touring indie acts and local heroes play close enough to touch. The address has been pouring since mid-century: the space cycled through lives as Mr. Von's Alamo, the Monroe Tavern and the long-running Bulldog Bar - its layout unchanged since the 1940s -.....

The arena opened one month before the Pepsi Center - and its hockey program has out-championed every NHL team in the same city. Magness Arena, the centerpiece of the University of Denver's Ritchie Center at 2240 Buchtel Boulevard, opened on 15 September 1999 and is home ice for one of college hockey's dynasties. The building replaced a rink with history: the old University of Denver Arena - razed in 1997 - had carried the program's early national titles, and the 84-million-dollar, 440,000-squar.....