7 Best Sights in Tempe and Around, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe

Arizona Museum of Natural History

Kids young and old get a thrill out of the largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the state. You can also pan for gold and see changing exhibits from around the world.

Family
53 N. Macdonald St., Mesa, Arizona, 85201, USA
480-644–2230
arizonamuseumofnaturalhistory.org
sights Details
Rate Includes: $12, Tues.–Fri. 10–5, Sat. 11–5, Sun. 1–5., Closed Mon.

Arizona State University

What began in 1886 as the Tempe Normal School for Teachers, a four-room redbrick building and 20-acre cow pasture, is now the 750-acre Tempe campus of ASU, the largest university in the Southwest. The university has five campuses across the Valley, with the Tempe campus serving as headquarters. As you walk around campus, you'll wind past public art and innovative architecture—including a music building that bears a strong resemblance to a wedding cake, designed by Taliesin students to echo Frank Lloyd Wright's Gammage Auditorium, and a law library shaped like an open book—and end up at Sun Devil Stadium, which is carved out of a mountain and cradled between the Tempe buttes.

Arizona State University Art Museum

This museum is in the gray-purple stucco Nelson Fine Arts Center, just north of Gammage Auditorium on the Arizona State campus. For a relatively small museum, it has an extensive collection, including 19th- and 20th-century paintings and sculptures by masters such as Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Rockwell Kent. Works by faculty and student artists are also on display, and there's a gift shop.
Free
Mill Ave. and 10th St., Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA
480-965–2787
asuartmuseum.asu.edu
sights Details
Rate Includes: Free, Tues. 11–8, Wed.–Sat. 11–5. Summer hrs vary., Closed Sun. and Mon.

Recommended Fodor's Video

LEGOLAND Discovery Center Arizona

Imagine thousands of square feet full of LEGO bricks, and not having to clean up any of them. No, it's not a dream---it's LEGOLAND. Kids can see giant LEGO creations as well as play, build, and watch.

Buy a dual ticket with the adjoining Sea Life Arizona Aquarium and save on admission.

Mesa Grande Cultural Park

Unpreserved in the middle of the city for years, this amazing, six-acre historic site features a group of Hohokam structures dating to 1400–1100 BC. Once protected only by locals and the occasional landowner, it's now operated by the Arizona Museum of Natural History.
Ruins Family
1000 N. Date St., Mesa, Arizona, 85201, USA
480-644–3075
arizonamuseumofnaturalhistory.org
sights Details
Rate Includes: $5, Oct.–May., Wed.–Fri. 10–2, weekends 10–4, Closed mid-May–mid-Oct. Closed Mon. and Tues.

Sea Life Arizona

Some 5,000 creatures including sharks, stingrays, eels, and a giant octopus call this underwater menagerie home. A 165,000-gallon tank with a 360-degree viewing tunnel is the first of its kind. Who says there's no water in the desert?

Buy a dual ticket with the adjoining LEGOLAND Discovery Center and save on admission.

Family
5000 Arizona Mills Cir., Tempe, Arizona, 85282, USA
480-478–7600
www.visitsealife.com/arizona
sights Details
Rate Includes: $20, Mon.–Thu., Sun. 10–6, Fri.-Sat. 10–6:30

Tempe Town Lake

The human-made Town Lake has turned downtown Tempe into a commercial and urban-living hot spot, and attracts college students and Valley residents of all ages. Little ones enjoy the Beach Park, and fishermen appreciate the rainbow trout–stocked lake. You also can rent a boat and tour the lake on your own.