A city is a place of tremendous variety, usually constructed upon rock ‘n’ roll. Plumb the secret depths of Cincinnati with today's Groupon: for $20, you get two tickets to the Queen City Underground: Bosses, Breweries, and Burials Walking Tour (a $40 value), starting from MiCa 12V on the corner of 12th Street and Vine Street.
The 90-minute walking tour weaves through the streets of the Gateway District on an exploratory trail through Cincinnati's past, before tunneling under the cityspace into storied underground tunnels. Sightseers visit historic landmarks and buildings where more than 130 saloons, bars, and beer gardens once liquored the locals, pass stages once graced by the likes of Charlie Chaplin and 19th-century gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok, and travel underground to view secret burial grounds and subsurface former brewery tunnels.
Queen City Underground’s ebullient and knowledgeable tour guides dress the part in black vests, bow ties, and derby hats that channel Winston Churchill and his alter ego, The Riddler. Throughout the adventure, guides will regale walkers with historical anecdotes and colorful tales of the city's former residents (including tyrannical political boss and avid stuffed-dolphin collector George Barnsdale "Boss" Cox), and explain why the city was once known as the Paris of the United States.
Bring a camera to document the tour and to capture intoxicated spirits stumbling from the ghost bars they once frequented. The tour is walking and stair-climbing intensive, so it would behoove guests to protect their hooves by wearing comfortable shoes.
American Legacy Tours
Initially designed as a temporary tour and fundraiser for student travel, American Legacy Tours began humbly as the Newport Gangster Tour in 2008. When met with overwhelming success, the friends who had embarked on what they thought was a temporary project decided to take root and expand, creating American Legacy Tours in 2010.
Their first order of business as an official company was to introduce the Queen City Underground Tour, an exploration of the city's underground tunnels and history as a rabbit village. Today, a cadre of educated guides leads 10 different area walking tours, including the Covington Is Haunted tour, an examination of the controversy, spirits, and shadowy history of this Northern Kentucky neighborhood, as well as seasonal Spirit of Christmas Tours and Newport is Haunted Tours held around Halloween.
