Denver Guides
Denver core
Capitol Hill
Denver's densest neighborhood -- circa-1920 low-rise apartment buildings around the Colorado State Capitol, with the metro's highest concentration of music venues and bars along Colfax.
Cherry Creek
Denver's upscale shopping-and-dining district, built around an enclosed mall and the 16-block Cherry Creek North retail grid, named for the creek along its southern edge.
Downtown Denver / Union Station
Denver's rail-hub anchor: a restored 1914 Beaux-Arts station, converted LoDo warehouse lofts, and the transit spine every other line in this metro radiates from.
Highlands / LoHi
Victorian worker cottages and dense new infill on the bluff above the South Platte -- Denver's most walkable close-in neighborhood, a bridge walk from Union Station.
RiNo / Five Points
One of Denver's oldest neighborhoods, and its historic jazz-era Black cultural district, now overlapping the mural-and-brewery-filled River North Art District.
Washington Park
Consistent early-1900s brick homes ringing a 165-acre park with two lakes -- named one of the American Planning Association's "Great Public Spaces in America."
East of Denver
Aurora
Colorado's third-largest city, spread across 154 square miles east of Denver -- Buckley Space Force Base, the Anschutz Medical Campus, and its own light rail spine.
Centennial
Colorado's 11th-largest city, incorporated in 2001 as -- at the time -- the largest municipal incorporation in U.S. history, named for Colorado's 1876 statehood.
South of Denver
Highlands Ranch
The largest unincorporated community in Colorado -- a 22,000-acre former ranch turned 1980s-2000s master-planned suburb, governed by one of the country's largest homeowners' associations.
Littleton
Arapahoe County's seat since 1904 -- a historic Main Street rail-depot town on the South Platte, with direct D Line light rail into downtown Denver.
Parker
A former stagecoach waystation turned one of the metro's fastest-growing towns, incorporated in 1981 with 285 residents -- now home to over 70,000.
West of Denver
Arvada
Site of Colorado's first recorded gold discovery in 1850 -- once the "Celery Capital of the World," now a historic-downtown suburb on RTD's G Line.
Golden
Colorado's territorial capital for five years before Denver took over -- a foothills town built around the Colorado School of Mines and the world's largest single-site brewery.
Lakewood
Colorado's fifth-largest city -- a 1969 incorporation that beat out the placeholder name "Jefferson City," with direct W Line light rail and Casa Bonita, made famous by South Park.
North of Denver & Boulder
Boulder
Home to CU Boulder and the Flatirons -- a growth-controlled college and tech town roughly midway between Denver and the mountains, technically its own separate metro area.
Broomfield
Colorado's 64th and newest county -- a 2001 consolidation of four overlapping county jurisdictions into a single city-and-county government, midway between Denver and Boulder.
Westminster
Named for a short-lived 1890 college built to resemble Princeton -- Colorado's 8th-largest city, on the B Line commuter rail and the Denver-Boulder Flatiron Flyer corridor.