Designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, the pedestrian promenade is made of red, white and gray granite in a repeating pattern that, seen from above, resembles the skin of a diamondback rattlesnake. Free shuttle buses, dubbed the MallRide, travel up and down the 16th Street Mall, stopping on every corner. Hop on and hop off as the shuttles come and go every few minutes and make everything downtown easy to reach.
THINGS TO SEE AND DO
The mall offers Denver’s best people watching. There are 42 outdoor cafés along the mall, making it the perfect place to grab a bite to eat or have a drink. Denver Pavilions, near the south end of the mall, is a shopping and dining complex with 12 movie theaters and more than two dozen shops and restaurants. At the north end of the mall, 16th Street continues as a pedestrian path over three bridges connecting downtown to Commons Park and LoHi, a hip neighborhood filled with restaurants and brewpubs. Points of interest along the mall include the D&F Tower, a two-thirds replica of the Campanile of St. Mark’s in Venice that was the highest building west of the Mississippi when it was built in 1909.
After dark, horse-drawn carriages and pedi-cabs carry people up and down the mall, while nearly a million lights twinkle above in the more than 200 trees that line the promenade.