Buffalo: the gateway to Niagara Falls

City on the Great Lakes with architectural heritage spanning Frank Lloyd Wright to Louis Sullivan, Buffalo remains primarily the convenient access point to Niagara Falls.

The center is explored on foot; for the falls a car or organized tour is needed.

Buffalo City Hall, an Art Deco skyscraper from the 1930s, offers from its viewing platform a view of the entire city and Lake Erie.

A few steps away, the Darwin Martin House, a complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1900s, remains one of the best-preserved examples of his organic architecture.

In the afternoon, it's worth heading to Niagara Falls, about thirty kilometers from downtown, where you hear the roar of the water well before seeing it.

Towards evening, returning to the city, a plate of Buffalo chicken wings, invented right here in the 1960s, concludes the day in a historic downtown restaurant.

Buffalo wings were invented almost by accident in 1964 at the Anchor Bar, to use up a shipment of wings destined for the waste bin—today they rank among America's most exported dishes worldwide.

Niagara Falls, shared between the United States and Canada, pours millions of liters of water per second: the view from the American side remains spectacular, even if less panoramic than the Canadian one.