Baltimore metropolitan area

The National Aquarium – also known as National Aquarium in Baltimore and formerly known as Baltimore Aquarium – is a non-profit public aquarium located at 501 East Pratt Street on Pier 3 in the Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. Constructed during a period of urban renewal in Baltimore, the aquarium opened on August 8, 1981. The aquarium has an annual attendance of 1.5 million visitors and is the largest tourism attraction in the State of Maryland. The aquarium holds more than 2,200,000 US gallons (8,300,000 L) of water, and has more than 17,000 specimens representing over 750 species. The National Aquarium's mission is to inspire conservation of the world's aquatic treasures. The aquarium's stated vision is to confront pressing issues facing global aquatic habitats through pioneering science, conservation, and educational programming.The National Aquarium houses several exhibits including the Upland Tropical Rain Forest, a multiple-story Atlantic Coral Reef, an open-ocean shark tank, and Australia: Wild Extremes, which won the "Best Exhibit" award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2008. The aquarium also has a "4D Immersion Theater." The aquarium opened a marine mammal pavilion on the adjacent south end of Pier 4 in 1990, and currently holds six Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Of the six, five were born at the National Aquarium, one was born at another American aquarium. In 2003, the National Aquarium and the much older and independent National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., formed an alliance to operate as a single National Aquarium with two sites. This arrangement continued until 2013, when the Washington location closed permanently.

USS Torsk, hull number SS-423, is a Tench-class submarine built for the United States Navy during World War II. Armed with ten torpedo tubes, the Tench-class submarines were incremental developments of the highly-successful Gato-class submarines that formed the backbone of the US Navy's submarine force during the war. Torsk was laid down at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in June 1944, was launched in September that year, and commissioned in December. In 1945, Torsk made two war patrols off Japan, sinking one cargo vessel and two coastal defense frigates. The latter of these, torpedoed on 14 August 1945, was the last enemy ship sunk by the United States Navy in World War II. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she operated primarily as a training vessel; she also went on deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and helped to train elements of the Atlantic Fleet in anti-submarine tactics. Decommissioned in 1964, she served for another seven years as a training vessel for the Naval Reserve. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in December 1971 and turned over to the state of Maryland for use as a museum ship. She is now part of the fleet of Historic Ships in Baltimore.

The Inner Harbor is a historic seaport, tourist attraction, and landmark of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It was described by the Urban Land Institute in 2009 as "the model for post-industrial waterfront redevelopment around the world". The Inner Harbor is located at the mouth of Jones Falls, creating the wide and short northwest branch of the Patapsco River. The district includes any water west of a line drawn between the foot of President Street and the American Visionary Art Museum. The name "Inner Harbor" is used not just for the water but for the surrounding area of the city, with approximate street boundaries of President Street to the east, Lombard Street to the north, Greene Street to the west, and Key Highway on the south. The harbor is within walking distance of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium. A water taxi connects passengers to Fells Point, Canton, and Fort McHenry.

United States lightship Chesapeake (LS-116/WAL-538/WLV-538) is a museum ship owned by the National Park Service and on a 25-year loan to Baltimore City, and is operated by Historic Ships in Baltimore Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. A National Historic Landmark, she is one of a small number of preserved lightships. Since 1820, several lightships have served at the Chesapeake lightship station and have been called Chesapeake. Lightships were initially lettered in the early 1800s, but then numbered as they were often moved from one light station to another. The name painted on the side of lightships was the short name of the Light Station they were assigned to and was the day time visual aspect of the many Aids to Navigation on board lightships. The United States Coast Guard assigned new hull numbers to all lightships still in service in April 1950. After that date, Light Ship 116 was then known by the new Coast Guard Hull number: WAL-538. In January 1965 the Coast Guard further modified all lightship hull designations from WAL to WLV, so Chesapeake became WLV-538. Chesapeake had many redundant systems in order to maintain her position through most storms. The 5000-pound (2300 kg) main anchor was backed up by a second 5000-pound anchor attached to the side of the ship. The 30,000 candela main light was also backed up with a secondary lamp and the Radio Locator Beacon also had a backup system. On more than one occasion (in 1933, 1936, and 1962) the main anchor chain snapped during violent storms and the ship had to use her engines to stay in place and drop her second anchor.

The Pratt Street Power Plant — also known as the Pier Four Power Plant, The Power Plant, "Pratt Street Toenail", and Pratt Street Station — is a historic former power plant located in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It has undergone significant repurposing development since retirement and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

WPG/WAGC/WHEC-37, originally called USCGC Taney (), is a United States Coast Guard High Endurance Cutter notable as the last warship floating that fought in the attack on Pearl Harbor. She was named for Roger B. Taney (1777–1864), who served as U.S. Attorney General, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the United States. She is also one of two Treasury-class (out of seven total) Coast Guard cutters still afloat. Active for 50 years, Taney saw action in both theaters of combat in World War II, serving as a command ship at the Battle of Okinawa, and as a fleet escort in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. She also served in the Vietnam War, taking part in Operation Market Time. Taney was also used in drug interdiction and fisheries protection work.She was decommissioned in 1986, and has since served as a museum ship in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Maryland. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988. In 2020, Historic Ships in Baltimore and the Living Classrooms Foundation announced that they will remove the name Taney from the ship, in recognition of her namesake's historical acts of racial injustice, instead identifying her as simply WHEC-37.

The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is an art museum located in Baltimore, Maryland's Federal Hill neighborhood at 800 Key Highway. The museum specializes in the preservation and display of outsider art (also known as "intuitive art," "raw art," or "art brut"). The city agreed to give the museum a piece of land on the south shore of the Inner Harbor under the condition that its organizers would clean up residual pollution from a copper paint factory and a whiskey warehouse that formerly occupied the site. It has been designated by Congress as America's national museum for visionary art.AVAM's 1.1 acre campus contains 67,000 square feet of exhibition space and a permanent collection of approximately 4,000 pieces. The permanent collection includes works by visionary artists like Ho Baron, Nek Chand, Howard Finster, Vanessa German, Mr. Imagination (aka Gregory Warmack), Leonard Knight, William Kurelek, Leo Sewell, Judith Scott, Ben Wilson, as well as over 40 pieces from the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre of London. AVAM artists, the museum boasts, include “farmers, housewives, mechanics, the disabled, the homeless. . . all inspired by the fire within.” The museum's Main Building features three floors of exhibition space, and the campus includes a Tall Sculpture Barn and Wildflower Garden, along with large exhibition and event spaces in the Jim Rouse Visionary Center. The museum has no staff curators, preferring to use guest curators for its shows. Rather than focusing shows on specific artists or styles, it sponsors themed exhibitions with titles such as Wind in Your Hair and High on Life. The museum's founder, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, takes pride in the fact that AVAM is "pretty un-museumy".

Located on the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Maryland, the Baltimore World Trade Center is the world's tallest regular pentagonal-based skyscraper (the pentagonal-based JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston is taller, but is not regular). It was designed by the architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, with the principal architects being Henry N. Cobb and Pershing Wong.Planning and design of the building began in April 1966. Construction started in October 1973. The building was completed in January 1977, and its construction cost was of $22 million.Rising 405 ft (123 m) above the one-acre plaza where it stands between Pratt Street and the harbor, the building is 30 stories tall when its basement, lobby level and upper utility level are included in the count. Gross floor space covers 422,000 sq ft (39,200 m2). Major building components include 309,000 sq ft (28,700 m2) of office floors, a lobby of 13,000 sq ft (1,200 m2), a basement of 20,800 sq ft (1,930 m2) and 38,000 sq ft (3,500 m2) of ground level plaza.

Pier Six Pavilion is a music venue located in Baltimore, Maryland. The waterfront venue is located on Pier Six of the Inner Harbor and opened in 1981.

Formed in 1985, the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) is part of the University System of Maryland. It was created to provide a unified focus for Maryland's biotechnology research and education.

Federal Hill Park is a 10.3 acres park located in Baltimore, Maryland on the south shore of the Inner Harbor. The park is a signature Baltimore landmark and offers visitors some of the most noted views in the city often photographed looking north to the downtown skyline of skyscrapers across the Inner Harbor (formerly known as "The Basin") of the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River / Baltimore Harbor. The Federal Hill surrounding neighborhood to the west and south is named for the prominent hill and is also known as old South Baltimore. The now graded grass lawn hill and park, was originally a jagged cliffs and bluffs of red clay which was mined in the 18th and 19th centuries after being first sighted and described by Captain John Smith of England on his voyages of exploration of the Chesapeake Bay from the first English colony at Jamestown, Virginia in 1608. The noted famous site today is bounded by Francis Scott Key Highway (Key Highway / Maryland Route 2) along the waterfront to the north, Battery Avenue to the west, Warren Avenue to the south, and Covington Street to the east. Baltimore city acquired the hill as public property in 1880 after it was used and fortified as a fort with heavy artillery (Fort Federal Hill) by the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865). It was established then as a city park operated and maintained by the city Department of Recreation and Parks.

USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy. She was built at the Gosport Shipyard between 1853 and 1855 and was named for the earlier frigate of the same name that had been broken up in 1853. The sloop's primary armament was 8-inch (203 mm) shell-firing guns and four 32-pounder long guns, though she carried other guns as well, including two Parrott rifle chase guns. Constellation's career as a front-line unit was relatively short; after entering service in 1855, she served with the Mediterranean Squadron until 1858, and in 1859, she was assigned as the flagship of the Africa Squadron, where she served with the African Slave Trade Patrol. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the ship returned to the Mediterranean to patrol for Confederate vessels. In late 1864, she returned to the United States to be decommissioned, as most of her crews' enlistments had expired. She spent the rest of the war out of service. Constellation was recommissioned in 1871 for use as a training ship, being used for shooting practice and training cruises for midshipmen. She filled this role for twenty-two years, and during this period, she saw a number of other activities, including transporting exhibits for the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris and carrying food to Ireland during the 1879 Irish famine. She was reduced to a stationary training hulk in late 1893, being moored in Newport for the next twenty years. During this period, the mistaken belief that the two Constellations were one and the same arose, and she was presented as such in 1914 during the centennial of the writing of "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States. Briefly renamed Old Constellation in 1917 to free the name for a new battlecruiser of the Lexington class, she reverted to her original name when the battlecruiser was scrapped in 1925. Constellation was recommissioned in 1940 as part of the build-up in anticipation of the United States' entry into World War II, during which she served as the port flagship of the commander of the Atlantic Fleet. Proposals to restore the vessel as a museum ship had been submitted already in the 1930s, but work began in earnest after World War II. Shortages of funds prevented her transfer to the city of Baltimore, Maryland until 1955. Operating under the mistaken belief that she was the original Constellation, the organization responsible for the ship modified her to match the earlier vessel's appearance during a refit in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, a controversy arose over the vessel's identity that lasted into the 1990s, when new research definitively proved that the Constellation launched in 1797 and the 1854-launched vessel were distinct ships. Periodic repairs have been carried out since the mid-1990s to repair rotted wood. Constellation remains open to the public as part of the Historic Ships in Baltimore in the city's Inner Harbor, having been designated a National Historic Landmark.