Step back in time and onto the Public Landing

Walk the cobblestone streets of a bustling riverwalk and get a sense for a city built on pork, beer, innovation and determination. New, dynamic soundscapes fill the reimagined Public Landing, presented by Carol and Bill Eckerle, simulating a raucous political debate, the clank and slosh of a German beer garden and the cobble-to-gangplank clatter of a wharf.

Guests can wander into six historic shops – a dressmaker, a printer, an open-air market, an expanded Ball and Thomas photography studio and more – and peek into the life of a tradesperson on the Western frontier. On the gangplank, meet the Queen City’s newest arrivals – perhaps your great-great grandparents – and see how somebody moving their entire lives into the west would’ve packed their bags.

Dodge a noisy running of the pigs through Porkopolis and step aboard the Queen of the West, redesigned and ship shape again. River travel was the heart and soul of Cincinnati’s early economy, and the expanded interior of the Queen of the West will take guests through a day in a captain’s galoshes steaming up the Ohio River.