Top Things to Do in Detroit

A guide-led drive vaults you beyond Instagram clichés into living margins, abandoned ballrooms where chandeliers dangle like glass teeth, then a sudden left onto a block ablaze with new street art that smells of wet paint and hot brick. Between stops you'll sip coffee roasted inside a 1925 firehouse while the guide explains how Detroit's weather, those sudden lake-effect temperature drops, helped preserve Art Deco facades from demolition crews.

Start beneath the Guardian Building's vaulted lobby where turquoise tiles echo like cathedral bells, then trace the 1805 fire line that obliterated the original French settlement. Guides hand you vintage photo transparencies so you can overlay 1920s streetscapes onto today's glass-box additions, the scent of roasted coffee from nearby cafes drifting past.

This budget tour punches above its price, ducking into the Prohibition tunnel that once ferried Canadian whisky beneath the streets and ending at the circa-1856 Fort Street Presbyterian Church whose spires still drip gargoyle rainwater onto your shoulders. Guides hand out bay leaves from Eastern Market so you can crush and smell Detroit's once-booming spice trade.

Skip the queue and step straight into a 180-degree ocean tunnel where green morays glide overhead like aquatic question marks. Kids press palms against the touch pool, giggling at the rough feel of sea stars while the ambient soundtrack gurgles like a scuba regulator.

Follow a guide from the clang of the 1897 Eastern Market sheds to a speakeasy-style coney island where mustard snaps against snapping hot dogs. Between bites you'll inhale the yeasty perfume of Slows BBQ pit and taste honeycomb so fresh it drips down your wrist.

Start inside the David Whitney Building's marble lobby where the espresso machine hisses like a locomotive, then zig-zag to five indie bakeries sampling everything from lavender-glazed rings to peppered bacon Long Johns. The sugar haze practically crackles in the cool air drifting off the Detroit River.

Recline in a canopied trike while your driver, often a local art student, pedals you past Dequindre Cut graffiti so fresh the aerosol still stings the nostrils. The open-sided cab lets you hear street drummers and smell slow-cooked brisket wafting from pop-up smokers.

Board a 40-foot cruiser docked at the Renaissance Center marina, champagne flutes clinking as the Ambassador Bridge's LED necklace reflects off black water. The captain throttles up so you feel cool river mist mingle with engine exhaust, the skyline shrinking to toy-town scale.

Pop in earbuds and follow GPS breadcrumbs from the 1848 State Capitol site to the Rosa Parks Transit Center while archival audio, actual 1960s union chants, plays over downtown traffic growls. Pause to feel the brushed-aluminum warmth of the Joe Louis fist sculpture as the narrator explains how Detroit's weather once iced streetcar cables solid.

Lantern light flickers across the Michigan Theatre's former façade, now a parking garage, while your guide recounts how the spot once screened "The Ten Commandments" before devolving to urban legend. Listen for phantom applause inside the long-gone balcony as cold air whooshes up from the structure's hollow core.