Pittsburgh suffers from two misconceptions, according to J.R. Shaw, group sales director for the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau. People either think of the city the way it used to be — a dark industrial town filled with smoke from steel mills and factories — or they think they have already done Pittsburgh.
“That doesn’t do us justice,” he said. “People need to rediscover Pittsburgh. If they have done a day trip or a quick overnight, they have not done Pittsburgh. Folks say, ‘We have done Pittsburgh. We have been to the aviary and on a Clipper cruise.’ No, you really haven’t.”
You should visit the congressionally designated National Aviary, with its 600 birds of 250 species, and take a cruise on one of the Gateway Clipper Fleets’ five boats. But there is so much more to do in Pittsburgh and in the surrounding area of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Plenty to do
The area has world-class museums and culture, an exciting sports scene, a great variety of ethnic dining options, more than 80 fascinating neighborhoods and an abundance of history and heritage.
And that’s just in Pittsburgh. “There is so much within a hour and a half,” said Shaw. “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Old Order Amish, covered bridges, outlet shopping, back country roads.”
Pittsburgh has reinvented itself into a clean, service-oriented city with a distinctive and attractive skyline of gleaming skyscrapers. The heart of the renaissance is the compact downtown — roughly one square mile — that is squeezed into a triangle of land between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers where they join to form the Ohio River.
The Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Architecture is marking its centennial this year. Courtesy Greater Pittsburgh CVB
Shaw said that with the proximity of three major performing-arts venues — Heinz Hall, the 2,889-seat Benendum Center for the Performing Arts and the O’Reilly Theater — arts and culture are hot with groups.
“The Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Pops, Pittsburgh Public Theater and a Broadway series are all concentrated in a small three-block area,” he said. “It creates a really dynamic district downtown.
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