Phoenix is ​​the capital and largest city of the US state of Arizona. The area was cultivated in bygone times by the Hohokam people, and the remains of their civilization could be seen in the 1800s, when settlers began to arrive at today’s Arizona. In 1867 Jack Swilling came here and he started cultivating the land.

More settlers arrived, and Lord Darrell Duppa suggested calling the growing place Phoenix, like a city built on a defunct civilization. The new town was formally approved in 1868, when a post office was opened with Jack Swilling as postmaster. In 1870, the inhabitants chose to move the city approximately 5 km to the west, and Phoenix grew to around 2,500 inhabitants in 1880.

The railroad came to town in the 1880s, and in 1889 the territory’s capital was moved from Prescott to Phoenix. Throughout the 1900s, the city’s trade and production were developed, resulting in large population growth. Phoenix grew from 65,000 residents in Phoenix in 1940 to now being one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

Today you can make some nice walks in downtown Phoenix, which is where an area was bought in 1870 to develop the new city. Downtown is defined as the area between Van Buren Street, Jackson Street, Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. In the eastern part of downtown is the Historic Heritage Square, which is the only area that has been preserved from the original Phoenix.

There are several buildings from the period 1881-1929 at the square, and in the small area you can visit The Rosson House Museum. Rosson House is a Victorian house completed in 1895, and on a visit, you can learn about the early history of the town. East of Heritage Square you can see the neoclassical Monroe School, built in 1914 as the largest elementary school west of the Mississippi. To the west of the area is the Arizona Science Center, a popular science museum.

Going west from Heritage Square, you can visit St. Mary’s Basilica, which is a beautiful Catholic church, which was built 1902-1914 in an elegant colonial style. There are some fine glass mosaics in the church. If you continue along the main street of Washington Street, you can see the impressive skyscrapers in downtown Phoenix, which create a modern urban space, and between the tall buildings are some of the city’s worth-seeing structures.

On the south side of Washington Street is the Maricopa County Courthouse, built as Phoenix’s City Hall in 1928-1929 in a mixed architectural style with Art Deco features. The city’s modern town hall building stands tall with a height of 112 meters on the opposite side of the street. In the area there are some old and new high-rise buildings, where you may notice the Luhrs Building, which at 42 meters was the city’s tallest when it was opened in 1924.

The beautiful art deco skyscraper Luhrs Tower from 1929 with a height of 56 meters can be seen next to the Luhrs Building. In the same architectural style, you can see the Orpheum Lofts from 1930-1931 and The Professional Building from 1931, while the 147-meter-high Chase Tower from 1972 is a good example of modern high-rise architecture.

Heading west from downtown, the Arizona State Capitol stands as a focal point at the end of Washington Street. The Capitol is the government building of the state of Arizona, and the oldest part was built between 1898 and 1901, and today it is open as the Arizona Capitol Museum. At the museum you can, among other things, see the house’s original political chambers and an exhibit about the battleship USS Arizona, which sank in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

You can visit many other interesting museums in Phoenix as well. The Phoenix Art Museum has very fine collections of visual art, and the museum building from 1959 was designed by Alden B. Dow, who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. You can see contemporary art at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and if you’re interested in the pre-Columbian era of the area, you can explore archaeological digs and finds at the Pueblo Grande Museum dating back to the Hohokam people.

I downtown Phoenix, you can choose to visit the modern Symphony Hall, which is home to the city’s symphony orchestra, Arizona Opera and Ballet Arizona. The city is also home to the Orpheum Theater from 1929, which was designed in Spanish Neo-Baroque, and is home to the Phoenix Opera.