Popular tourist attractions in Dallas include Pioneer Plaza, Dallas Arts District, Fountain Place skyscraper, Reunion Tower, and Shopper’s Alley.
Pioneer Plaza is the most extensive square within the Dallas Business District, and it is also the second most visited landmark in Dallas, after Dealey Plaza (where president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963).
The square is located right next door to the Dallas Convention Center, and it is dedicated to the local cowboy tradition, as well as a show of honor to the routes that brought settlers and pioneers to the region.
Among Pioneer Plaza highlights are its bronze statues, depicting an event from traditional Longhorn gathering led by cowboys, as well as the nearby Pioneer Cemetery, which includes a memorial for the Civil War (with Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, among others).
Dallas Arts District (www.artsdistrict.org), meanwhile, is an arts district, best known for having a wide variety of art and performance art landmarks, being located right within downtown Dallas, East of West End Historic District.
The area is, in fact, the largest urban arts area within United States with its size of about 0.28 km², and contains 13 significant urban arts facilities and organizations.
Naturally, if you do visit the area, a visit is easy to combine with experiencing one of the performances from these organizations, such as Dallas Black Dance Theatre (www.dbdt.com), Dallas Symphony Orchestra (www.dallassymphony.com), or Dallas Theater Center/Arts District Theater (www.dallastheatercenter.org).
The district also has several art history museums, including Dallas Museum of Art (www.dallasmuseumofart.org) and Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art (www.crowcollection.org), whose collections are of Asian art exclusively.
If you get to know the area on foot, one of the best places to direct your feet is the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center (www.meyersonsymphonycenter.com).
Tourist attractions in Dallas highlights also include Fountain Place (www.fountainplace.com), located within Arts District, at 1445 Ross Avenue, and it consists of one of the most beautiful American skyscrapers (designed by I.M. Pei), surrounded by a romantic area with 172 small water-fountains, giving the place its name.
These water-fountains provide a great place to take a relaxing moment while sightseeing, looking at the central water-fountain with synchronized water sprout sequences.
Central to the place, however, is the skyscraper, which is best known for having such a unique architecture, reminiscent of a big, multidimensional prism, with many similar features to the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, another I.M. Pei design.
Internationally, the building gained fame as the office building for “Ewing Oil” in the popular TV series “Dallas”
Reunion Tower (www.reuniontower.com), on the other hand, is a 171-meter tall skyscraper within Hyatt Regency Hotel complex, and it is also the 15th tallest building in Dallas.
The tower is one of the most famous landmarks depicting Dallas, similarly to how, say, the Eiffel tower depicts Paris.
Reunion Tower’s viewing platform is among the most popular tourist attractions in Dallas by itself, located on the first visiting floor of the tower, to which the elevator ride takes a total of 68 seconds.
The building also has a revolving restaurant “Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck”, which is an expensive a la carte restaurant, located on the uppermost visiting floor of the skyscraper.
Floor between the restaurant and the viewing platform floors is primarily dedicated towards different types of special events, and available for private events through Wolfgang Puck Catering.
Another Dallas tourism sight is the Shopper’s Alley (especially from Harry Hines Boulevard all the way to the Royal Lane), within the Dallas Koreatown district, being one of the best areas for shopping in the city.
The place is especially known for its many wholesale, factory, and retail stores, selling trendy clothing, cheap jewelry, and perfumes, among other things.
Of the shops within the area, the best known is Sam Moon (www.sammoon.com), but many of the less well-known stores can often offer competitive prices in many product categories, so you should definitively shop around.