Chicago Botanic Garden is dazzling patrons and visitors from around the world with their fifth annual holiday display of light and music: Lightscape. Clusters of multigenerational households push strollers, carry children and walk arm in arm with older relatives as they navigate the 1.3-mile (2.1-kilometer) experience in the village of Glencoe, near Chicago.
More than 22 light installations by various local and international artists light a path through established gardens that snake around the Great Basin in the core of the garden’s 385 acres.
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Highlights of the experience include passing through the “Electric Ribbon Tunnel” created by Culture Creative; “Sea of Light," created by UK artist Ithaca, which has 4,800 individually controlled balls of LED light; “Lilies,” by UK artist Jigantics, with 22 illuminated 5-foot (1.5-meter) lilies that float in and around the darkness of the Great Basin; and “Laser Lake,” projecting a rainbow of light dancing across the Great Basin.
A crowd favourite, “Winter Cathedral,” features a cathedral window arch of 100,000 lights that extends along a 110-foot (33.5-meter) tunnel at the end of your journey. The event ends on January 7.