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Louisville pronounces its name with a deliberate slur, locals say LOO-ee-vil, and that small linguistic assertion tells you something about the city's relationship with outsiders. It sits on the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio, the only significant natural break in the river between Pittsburgh and the Gulf, which is why the town was founded here in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and why it mattered. The Falls of the Ohio State Park on the Indiana side exposes 390-million-year-old fossil beds when the river is low, which is one of those genuinely strange free experiences that cities on old rivers can occasionally offer.

Louisville is the undisputed capital of Kentucky bourbon, with the urban Bourbon Trail running through the Nulu neighborhood and the Distillery District along the river.

The Louisville Slugger Museum on West Main Street is the factory where the famous bats are still made, and outside hangs a six-story cast-iron replica of the bat that Babe Ruth swung. Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville in 1942, and the Muhammad Ali Center downtown combines his boxing legacy with his civil rights activism in a way that is more honest and nuanced than most athlete museums attempt.