Ferris Bueller's Day Off: A Chicago Day Out

The day starts at school, or rather without Ferris. Dean Edward R. Rooney and his secretary Grace are determined to catch Ferris's chronic truancy, while Ferris has quietly hacked the computer to cut his absences to two. The exteriors are Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, where director John Hughes himself was a student. Ben Stein's droning lecture on the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, delivered to a bored classroom, was not in the script: Hughes told him to improvise it on camera.

Visitor guidance: A working public school in Northbrook; view the exterior from the street and respect school hours.

Having sprung Sloane and borrowed the Ferrari, Ferris leads Cameron and Sloane into the Loop and up the Sears Tower to the observation deck. The skyscraper, 110 stories high, now goes by Willis Tower, though locals still call it the Sears. Its Skydeck, the highest observation deck in the United States, draws more than 1.7 million visitors a year.

Visitor guidance: The Skydeck is entered from the Willis Tower; check opening hours before you go.

After the Sears Tower, the trio head to the Art Institute. Ferris and Sloane share a tender moment in front of Marc Chagall's America Windows, while Cameron struggles to find his identity in the face of a child in Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Hughes called the scene self-indulgent: the museum had been a place of refuge for him, and he loved it. It sits in Grant Park, on Michigan Avenue, and is open to visitors.

Visitor guidance: The museum is in Grant Park, Chicago; check current galleries before you go.

Next the trio sit in the left field stands at Wrigley Field, where Ferris flexes his hand after supposedly catching a foul ball. The in-park shots were filmed on 24 September 1985 at a Cubs game against the Montreal Expos. Hughes, a White Sox fan, had first wanted Comiskey Park, but the team was out of town during filming. The ballpark opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park.

Visitor guidance: Wrigley Field is the Cubs’ home ballpark; check the game schedule before you go.

Ferris climbs aboard a float in the Von Steuben Day Parade and lip syncs to Danke Schoen, then Twist and Shout. It was filmed on two Saturdays in the heart of downtown Chicago, the first during a real parade. When radio stations invited the public to a John Hughes movie, 10,000 people turned up. The parade is the film's calendar oddity: the story is set near the end of the school year, not in September.

Location precision: The sources place the shoot only in the heart of downtown Chicago, so the pin marks the Loop and not a street.

Back at Cameron's house, Ferris jacks the Ferrari up in reverse to try to rewind the odometer. Cameron kicks the bumper until the jacks give way and the car crashes backward through the garage wall. The house is the Ben Rose House in Highland Park, a modernist house from 1954 with a car pavilion added in 1974. It is a private residence, designated a local landmark in 1987.