Louisville

Overview

Louisville is Kentucky’s largest city and if you happen to find yourself there in the spring, the air is sweet with the scent of Bluegrass and the buzz of one of the world’s greatest horse races: the Kentucky Derby. The rolling pastures surrounding this horse-loving city feed the magnificent steeds which are revered by locals and foreigners who descend on Louisville the first week of May when the horses, streamlined and fit as possible, launch themselves along a track for the race of their lives.   

Often referred to as the “gateway to the South” Louisville was founded in 1778 by General George Rogers Clark and a handful of settlers and soldiers when he stopped to admire a waterfall and a boulder chalked full of fossils. They never left and ultimately named the spot “Louisville” after French King Louis XVI who lost his head to the Guillotine during the French Revolution; his statue state stands in the centre of the city as a reminder. 

Wander the tree-lined streets of Old Louisville past Victorian mansions and stroll into Conrad-Caldwell House, an enormous Romanesque revival overlooking Central Park built by Theophilus Conrad, a timber tycoon who had a flair for expensive furnishings and ornate stonework. At the Falls of the Ohio Fossil Beds, discover why the original settlers couldn’t take their eyes away from the world’s largest exposed Devonian fossil bed. Raw nature in the form of underground caverns at the Mammoth Cave Natural Park is just outside of the city and has more than 365 miles of passageways to explore, the deepest at 379 feet below the surface. Comfort food waits back in Louisville in the form of pan-seared pork chop or crawfish corn pudding, washed down with a bracing local bourbon. 

An evening stroll along the 6.9-mile River Walk where you can see boats passing around the Falls of Ohio in the distance as the sun sets pink over the sparkling Arkansas River is just as romantic as it sounds.