The National WWI Museum and Memorial sits atop a hill in Kansas City, anchored by a 217-foot Egyptian Revival obelisk that has dominated the skyline since 1926. What's remarkable is how it got there: in just ten days after the armistice, Kansas Citians raised more than $2.5 million, roughly $40 million today, to honour the four million Americans who had served.

Step inside and you cross a glass bridge suspended above 9,000 red poppies, each representing a thousand military deaths. Below, the museum holds the world's largest collection of WWI artefacts, tracing the full arc of a conflict that reshaped the modern world.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Liberty Memorial as a gateway into Kansas City's civic character, tracing how a city in the American heartland channelled grief into stone and community fundraising into a monument that Congress eventually designated the nation's official WWI memorial.