This is a listing of popular tourist attractions and major recurring events in the Louisville metropolitan area:

Annual festivals and events

• Adam Matthews Balloon Festival
• Corn Island Storytelling Festival ^*
• Gaslight Festival (Jeffersontown), annual event held in September
• Germanic heritage festivals: Strassenfest in August and Oktoberfest in October
• Kentucky Art Car Weekend in August ^*
• Kentucky Bourbon Festival (Bardstown)
• Kentucky Derby Festival, Kentucky's largest single annual event
• Kentucky Shakespeare Festival
• Kentucky State Fair, annual 10-day event held in August at the Kentucky Exposition Center, next to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom
• Kentuckiana Pride Festival ^*, annual events in June in support of LGBT pride and rights
• Lebowski Fest, a festival for fans of the movie, The Big Lebowski
• St. James Court Art Show
• Starlight Strawberry Festival (Starlight, Indiana), annual event held during Memorial Day weekend

Arts and entertainment

• Actors Theatre (See also Theater in Kentucky)
• Caesars Indiana (Elizabeth, Indiana)
• Fourth Street Live!, a downtown entertainment and shopping complex
• The Kentucky Center
• The Kentucky Theater
• The Louisville Palace
• Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom

Distinctive locales

• Old Louisville is the third largest historic preservation district in the U.S. and features:
  • the highest number of buildings of Victorian architecture in a U.S. neighborhood
  • Louisville's Central Park
  • St. James Court, famous for the annual St. James Court Art Show.
• The Highlands area, which features:
  • Distinctive shops and restaurants along Bardstown Road and Baxter Avenue
  • Cherokee Triangle and Original Highlands historic neighborhoods

Historic properties

• Belle of Louisville, the oldest Mississippi-style steamboat in operation on the inland waterways of the U.S. (Built 1914-1915 in Pittsburgh for service in Memphis as the Idlewild, renamed Avalon in 1948, purchased by Jefferson County and renamed Belle of Louisville in 1962.)
• Farmington Historic Home
• Fort Knox, including the U.S. Bullion Depository and Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor (Hardin County)
• The Galt House — the famous hotel
• Historic Locust Grove farm, home of George Rogers Clark
• My Old Kentucky Home State Park (Bardstown), featuring the Federal Hill mansion (inspiration for Stephen Foster's My Old Kentucky Home) and Stephen Foster, The Musical ^*
• Riverside, The Farnsley-Moremen Landing ^*
• Seelbach and Brown hotels
• Thomas Edison House ^*
• Vogue Theater, a movie theater in St. Matthews that closed in 1998, known for showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show for 25 years. Its sign is being refurbished as a historical landmark.
• Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Museums

• Callahan Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind
• Frazier International History Museum — features war weaponry and related historical artifacts, especially focusing on British and U.S. conflicts
• Howard Steamboat Museum (Jeffersonville, Indiana)
• Kentucky Derby Museum ^*
• Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft
• Louisville Museum Plaza (future)
• Louisville Science Center — features an IMAX theater
• Louisville Slugger Museum
• Muhammad Ali Center
• Old Bardstown Village / Civil War Museum of the Western Theater ^* (Bardstown)
• Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor (Fort Knox)
• Speed Art Museum
• Louisville also has several important genealogical collections at The Filson Historical Society, the Sons of the American Revolution national library and the Louisville Free Public Library

Parks and other outdoor attractions

See also City of Parks Louisville is home to a myriad of spacious city parks and forested areas, several designed by Frederick Law Olmsted; distinctive examples include:

• Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest (Bullitt County)
• Blackacre State Nature Preserve
• Bridges to the Past ^* (Radcliff)
• Cave Hill Cemetery and Arboretum
• Central Park
• Cherokee Park
• E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park
• Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area (Clarksville, Indiana), featuring the oldest exposed Devonian fossil beds in the United States
• Iroquois Park — features a locally popular amphitheater with shows produced by Music Theatre Louisville
• Jefferson Memorial Forest, in southwest Louisville, the largest municipal urban forest in the United States
• Levee Bike Trail
• Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy ^*
• Louisville Waterfront Park and Belvedere — features annual Thunder Over Louisville fireworks and air show during the Kentucky Derby Festival
• Louisville Zoo
• Otter Creek Park (Brandenburg)
• Riverwalk Trail
• Seneca Park
• Shawnee Park
• Tioga Falls Hiking Trail ^* (Radcliff)
• Zachary Taylor National Cemetery

Sports-related attractions

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• Churchill Downs thoroughbred racetrack and the Kentucky Derby Museum
• Louisville Extreme Park
• Louisville Slugger Field, baseball stadium that is home to the Louisville Bats
• Louisville Slugger Museum
• Muhammad Ali Center
• Valhalla Golf Club, designed by professional golfer Jack Nicklaus

Louisville attractions | United States-related lists | Lists of attractions by city