Tacoma audiotours

Tacoma wears the nickname Grit City with a kind of affectionate defiance. For decades the city was best known for the Tacoma Aroma, the sulfurous smell from the Asarco copper smelter that shut in 1985, and for being the less glamorous neighbor to Seattle on Puget Sound. The transformation has been remarkable. The Museum of Glass, designed by Arthur Erickson and opened in 2002, anchors a waterfront that also holds the Washington State History Museum and the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a pedestrian walkway covered in Dale Chihuly's signature blown-glass sculptures. Chihuly grew up in Tacoma and the city has embraced the connection with justified pride.

Point Defiance Park occupies the northwestern tip of the city with 760 acres of old-growth forest, shoreline, a zoo and aquarium, and a working replica of Fort Nisqually.

On clear days, Mount Rainier fills the southeastern sky with a volume that seems impossible for something so far away. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, rebuilt after the infamous 1940 collapse, spans the sound dramatically, and the city's Stadium District holds some of the best-preserved Craftsman and Victorian homes in the Pacific Northwest.