• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

The Prohibition-era Brown Hotel is a national historic landmark.   (Photo: Courtesy of The Brown Hotel)

Ogle Virgil Marti’s neon velvet Landscape Wallpaper and Ned Kahn’s fog-exuding Cloud Rings sculpture at the art-filled 21c Museum Hotel (from $269), opened by bourbon heiress Laura Lee Brown in 2006. Request a balcony suite for a private terrace with views of downtown Louisville.

Order the Hot Brown—an open-faced turkey sandwich piled with bacon, tomato, and Mornay sauce—at the Brown Hotel (from $159), where the regional dish was invented in 1926. Scope out the hand-painted ceilings between sips of the 54 varieties of bourbon served at the mahogany bar.

Admire the chandeliers and opulent décor of the Baroque Beaux-Arts Seelbach Hilton (from $218), where Tom and Daisy got married in The Great Gatsby. Try a Seelbach Cocktail, made with Champagne, bitters, and bourbon, in the hotel’s wood-and-leather-trimmed Old Seelbach Bar.

Published on Mar 24, 2010 as a web exclusive.