Labyrinth at Garfield Park Conservatory

Behind Chicago's great Victorian glasshouse, one of the largest conservatories in the world, a permanent outdoor labyrinth lies in the conservatory grounds. The setting is the West Side's greatest public garden, and the path extends the conservatory's offer from looking at plants to walking among them slowly. The Labyrinth Locator's record lists it as Classical 7-circuit; installed c. 2000.

Every labyrinth is a walking practice, not a puzzle: a single path winds to a center and back out, and the walk is done slowly, as prayer or meditation. The pattern descends from the medieval pavement labyrinth at Chartres, and the modern urban revival began in the 1990s when Lauren Artress brought replicas of that path to American congregations and public grounds through Veriditas and the Labyrinth Society, whose World-Wide Labyrinth Locator now catalogs thousands. There is no branching and no trick to the path; walkers of every religion and none use it.

Visiting

garfieldconservatory.org carries the site's own information and schedule.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garfield_Park_Conservatory_Structure.jpg), CC BY-SA.