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Where to Stay in Cicero, Illinois
Cicero is a Cook County town just west of the Chicago city limits, named after Marcus Tullius Cicero and dating from 1867.
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Where to stay in Cicero
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
The Chicago line is the deciding factor. Cicero sits directly against the Chicago city limits, so a room here works for anyone who wants the city within a short run but would rather sleep in a smaller town, and the whole municipality covers barely fifteen square kilometres. No trip across town takes long.
St. Mary of Częstochowa in Cicero, Grace Lutheran Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption stand within the same compact grid, and none of them is far from the next. Hawthorne Race Course pulls its own visitors. A stay on that side suits race days and keeps the Hawthorne Works name close, while the Anton Cermak House holds a listed address among the residential streets.
Parish streets are the alternative. Rooms among them put Grace Lutheran Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption on the doorstep, which suits visitors here for the town rather than for Chicago, and Spanish is the everyday language of a municipality that is the most Hispanic in Illinois. Cook County takes over past the town line.
Cicero holds only fifteen square kilometres, so almost any address here is within reach of Hawthorne Race Course, the churches and the road into Chicago.
About Cicero
Hawthorne carries two names here.
What is Cicero known for?
Hawthorne Works and Hawthorne Race Course share it, the first from the industry that filled the town's working decades and the second from the track that gave Cicero a draw of its own. Al Capone made the name notorious. The gangster moved here in the early 1920s to put distance between himself and the Chicago Police, and the association has stuck to the town ever since.
What are the main landmarks in Cicero?
Two Hawthornes and three churches. Hawthorne Works and Hawthorne Race Course carry the industrial and sporting halves of the record, while the Anton Cermak House holds a listed address among the residential streets. The churches are the other set.
St. Mary of Częstochowa in Cicero, Grace Lutheran Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption stand for the congregations that built here.
What is the history of Cicero?
The name comes from Rome. Cicero was named after Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator, and the town itself dates from 1867, when the ground west of the Chicago city limits was still filling up. Industry arrived with the century.
Hawthorne Works gave the town its working decades and a name that still attaches to this corner of Cook County, and Hawthorne Race Course took the same name for a different trade. Cook County held the whole of it. Capone made the town notorious.
Al Capone moved out here in the early 1920s to get clear of the Chicago Police, and the association has outlived the era that produced it by a long way. The churches tell a steadier story. St. Mary of Częstochowa in Cicero, Grace Lutheran Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption were raised by congregations that arrived across different decades, and the Anton Cermak House survives from the same residential build-out.
The town changed again later. Cicero became the most Hispanic municipality in Illinois, and Spanish now carries the ordinary business of a place that earlier arrivals from elsewhere had built.
Where is Cicero?
Fifteen square kilometres, hard up against Chicago. Cicero fills that space inside Cook County with a street grid that stops only where the Chicago city limits begin, leaving no open country at all inside the town line. Everything here is built.
Hawthorne Works, Hawthorne Race Course and the churches sit within the same grid, and Chicagoland carries on unbroken in every direction past the boundary.
What is the climate of Cicero?
The city's weather is the town's weather. Cicero shares whatever crosses Chicago, since the town line is the only thing between them, and that means deep winter cold, a short spring and summers that turn heavy for weeks at a time. Race days favour the warmer half.
Hawthorne Race Course and a walk between the churches are both easier once the cold lifts, which leaves the middle of the year as the straightforward time to come.
How do you get to Cicero?
Chicago begins at the town line. Cicero sits just west of the Chicago city limits, so arrivals come through Chicagoland and cross into Cook County's inner suburbs rather than travelling any real distance from the city. The grid does the rest.
Fifteen square kilometres put Hawthorne Race Course, Grace Lutheran Church and the Anton Cermak House within a modest run of one another, and the road into Chicago is never long.
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Updated August 2026