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The Gateway Arch is 192 metres of gleaming stainless steel beside the Mississippi River, and it is the most immediately recognisable structure between the Appalachians and the Rockies. It was completed in 1965 as a monument to Westward Expansion and the role St. Louis played as the departure point for Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery expedition in 1804. Taking the tiny egg-shaped tram to the top -- a 4-minute ride through the hollow legs of the arch -- is a genuine structural adventure. Forest Park, set out for the 1904 World's Fair and Louisiana Purchase Exposition, is at 1,371 acres larger than Central Park and holds the St. Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, the Zoo and the Science Center, all free.

The neighbourhoods south and west of downtown tell a different story of the city's century.

The Hill is a compact Italian-American enclave in south St. Louis where toasted ravioli was allegedly invented at Angelo's restaurant in the 1940s (the story goes that a chef accidentally dropped them in hot oil instead of boiling water and served them anyway). Soulard, the city's oldest neighbourhood and home to one of the oldest farmers' markets in the US (established 1779), is a grid of red-brick row houses that holds the city's Mardi Gras, the largest outside New Orleans. Ted Drewes Frozen Custard on Chippewa Street, open since 1929, makes a concrete thick enough to hold upside down, and sells them from a drive-in that lines the kerb every summer evening.