Baltimore, Maryland — Activities
Baltimore Culture
Baltimore's performing arts have a long and distinguished history. The American national anthem was penned here and the elite of American society helped culture flourish.
Use Ticketmaster(tel: (410) 547 7328; website: www.ticketmaster.com) or Baltimore Tickets at the Visitors Center, 451 Light Street (tel: 1 877 225 84673; website: www.baltimore.org).
Baltimore Ambassador magazine lists cultural performances and events and is often found in hotels. Monthly Baltimore Magazine also lists events and offers dining suggestions. City Search (website: www.baltimore.citysearch.com) provides up-to-date information on cultural events.
Music: The city's main classical music venue is the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral Street, Mount Vernon, home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (tel: (410) 783 8000; website: www.bsomusic.org). The Lyric Opera House, 140 West Mount Royal Avenue (tel: (410) 685 5086; website: www.lyricoperahouse.com), boasts a few unusual guests, such as Alanis Morissette and the Moscow Ballet, as well as hosting musicals as well as opera. The Baltimore Opera Company, 110 W. Mt. Royal Avenue (tel: (410) 727 6000; website: www.baltimoreopera.com), is more traditional in its performances, although sometimes includes musicals. The Peabody Institute, 1 East Mount Vernon Place (tel: (410) 659 8100; website: www.peabody.jhu.edu), the oldest music school in the USA, often schedules free recitals as well as running workshops for the public.
Theater: Baltimore's many theaters are cast across the Downtown area. The Strand Theater Company, 1823 North Charles Street (tel: (443) 874 4917; website: www.strandtheatercompany.org) aims to explore innovative drama to inspire the younger generation, with emphasis on the feminine perspective. Theater Hopkins performs in a brick barn dating from 1804, located at Johns Hopkins University (tel: (410) 516 7159; website: www.jhu.edu/~theater). This semi-professional company performs everything from Shakespeare to Shaw and Sophocles. Center Stage, 700 North Calvert Street (tel: (410) 332 0033; website: www.centerstage.org), produces a similarly diverse repertoire, keeping ticket prices low to ensure drama is available to all. The Everyman Theater, 1727 North Charles Street (tel: (410) 752 2208; website: www.everymantheater.org) performs classics, such as Chekhov, alongside contemporary premieres. It has plans to move to 315 W. Fayette Street by 2010. The Vagabond Players, 806 South Broadway, Fells Point (tel: (410) 563 9135; website: www.vagabondplayers.org), tend to perform modern classics, including those by local playwrights.
For dinner-theater, try Toby's (tel: (410) 649 1660 or 1 866 998 6297: website: www.tobysdinnertheater.com). It serves adaptations of popular musicals, like Phantom and West Side Story, with its buffet menu. Family owned Lorenzo's Timonium Dinner Theater, 9603 Deereco Road (tel: (410) 560 1113 or 1 877 560 1113; website: www.timoniumdinnertheater.com), offers Broadway-type shows and tasty homemade specialties.
Dance: In addition to occasional dance performances at some of the above venues, there is the Baltimore Dance Center, 1546 Eastern Boulevard (tel: (410) 574 2444; website: www.baltimoredancecenter.com), which offers classes. The Baltimore Ballet School (tel: (410) 667 7974; website: www.baltimoreballet.com) performs classics at major venues around the city.
Film: The Senator Theater, 5904 York Road (tel: (410) 435 8338; website: www.senator.com), was built during the golden age of Hollywood and is one of few surviving examples of a real neighborhood movie theater. As well as plenty of ordinary cinemas showing the latest Hollywood releases, there are a couple of specialist venues for art house releases. The Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive (tel: (443) 573 1700; website: www.artbma.org), screens independent shorts, with free entrance, while the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral Street (tel: (410) 396 5430; website: www.pratt.lib.md.us), shows a broader range of material.
Because of its varied topography, Maryland has proved a popular destination for Hollywood film-makers. Two Baltimore-born directors, Barry Levinson and John Waters, have been responsible for putting their hometown on the movie map. Levinson's Baltimore-based films, starting with Diner and later including Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990) and Liberty Heights (1999), pay tribute to life in 1960s-era Baltimore, when the director himself was growing up in the city. Waters, on the other hand, aims his attention toward the quirky side of life in Baltimore - films such as Hairspray (1988) and Serial Mom (1994) have become cult classics, with the former remade in 2007. The Sum of All Fears(2002), based on the Clancy novel of the same name, sees Baltimore devastated by a terrorist nuclear bomb. Baltimore is also the setting for Patriot Games (1992), the Pelican Brief (1993) and Twelve Monkeys (1995). A significant portion of Enemy of the State (1998), starring Will Smith, was set and filmed in Baltimore, as was Live Free or Die Hard(2007).Step Up(2006) and its sequel Step Up 2 The Streets (2008) are also set in the city.
Literary Notes: Strongly associated with Baltimore and standing on either side of the fence are two literary giants - writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and H L Mencken (1880-1956), critic par excellence. Poe's house, 203 Amity Street, is now a museum. His grave can be found at Westminster Cemetery, (corner of Fayette Street and Greene Street). Mencken, who became famous for his biting literary criticism, lived at 1524 Hollins Street, Union Square. His major work, The American Language (1921), had a huge influence on American writing in the 1920s.
Francis Scott Key (1799-1843) is famous for his poem, The Defence of Fort McHenry, penned while watching the American flag flying during the unsuccessful British siege of Baltimore. In 1931, it was adopted as the US national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.
Much of the town's literary past centers on the Mount Vernon district, which also hosts the annual Book Festival in September. Meanwhile, F Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was treated for mental illness at the Johns Hopkins University. Fitzgerald (1896-1940) finished Tender is the Night (1934) while living in the area.
The master of silly poems and snappy aphorisms, Ogden Nash, was living in Cross Keys when he died in 1971. Pulitzer Prize-winner Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), was born in Baltimore, while Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) studied at Johns Hopkins University. Russell Baker, a New York Times Baltimore columnist, based his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1995) on his boyhood, while several of Anne Tyler's works are set in Baltimore, including The Accidental Tourist (1985). The Corner (1997), by David Simon, gives a gritty view of inner city Baltimore. The author spent a year following local police homicide squads to learn about addiction and violence in the western suburbs of the city.
Baltimore Tours
Walking Tours
Free guided tours depart from the Inner Harbor Visitor Center. The Heritage Walk connects 20 historic sites and museums along the Inner Harbor (tel: (443) 514 5900; website: www.heritagewalk.org). Alternatively, try the Mount Vernon Cultural Walk, taking in 20 top sights - from the Basilica of the Assumption (the first cathedral in the United States) and the Washington Monument to the Walters Art Museum, the Peabody Institute and Mount Vernon Place (tel: (443) 984 3089; website: www.starspangledtrails.org). The Baltimore Waterfront Promenade offers 11km (7 miles) of paths to follow - with the advantage that you can always hop on a water taxi if your legs get tired!
The Preservation Society offers architecture, maritime, African-American and immigration history tours for a small fee, setting off from the Fells Point Visitors' Center, 812 South Ann Street (tel: (410) 675 6750; website: www.preservationsociety.com). Check for times.
Baltimore Tours (tel: 1 888 848 3822; website: www.baltimoretours.net) runs spookily silly haunted walking tours around the Mount Vernon and Fell's Point areas, for a fee.
All guided walks run from April to November, with brochures on sale for self-guided tours from each visitor center. Visit local historian Wayne Schaumburg's website (home.earthlink.net/~wschaumburg) for more walking options.
For something rather different, opt for a Segway tour (motorized stand up two-wheelers). These are also run by Baltimore Tours - around Fell's Point and the Inner Harbor. You'll be accompanied by a guide with knowledge of local history as well as training to teach you how to master your new mode of transport.
Bus Tours
Visitors can explore the city aboard a Baltimore Duck - an amphibious vehicle. The tour covers land attractions and then takes a splash in the Inner Harbor for a watery view of the city (tel: 1 877 887 8225; website: www.baltimoreducks.com). Departs from the corner of Light Street Pavilion at Harborplace.
Water Tours
For cruises of the harbor area and Chesapeake Bay, a key tourist attraction in its own right, contact Baltimore Spirit Cruises (tel: 1 866 312 2469; website: www.spiritcruisesbaltimore.com) or Baltimore Tours (tel: 1 888 848 3822; website: www.baltimoretours.net). They each offer a range of lunch and dinner cruises, with the larger vessels accommodating up to 450. Inner Harbor Cruises (tel: (410) 800 4998; website: www.clippercity.com) offers private tours on all manner of ships - from a sailing vessel to a turn-of-the-century paddleboat. Though the water taxi (tel: (410) 563 3901 or 1 800 658 8947; website: www.thewatertaxi.com) is more of a shuttle, it's a cheap, convenient and enjoyable way of viewing the harbor.
