You enter Paducah through a gate in a wall. The great floodwall that protects the town from the Ohio's fury opens onto the landing, and its concrete panels have become an open-air gallery: some fifty murals painted by artist Robert Dafford and his team recount two centuries of local history, from Native American nations to memorable floods, from steamboats to street bands. It is hard to imagine a better introduction to a town that has made creativity its identity.

Quilt City, capital of textile art

Paducah owes its nickname of Quilt City to a unique institution: the National Quilt Museum, the largest museum in the world devoted to quilting. Its galleries display on rotation a collection of several hundred contemporary works, in which textile reaches a virtuosity that astonishes even visitors who came out of simple curiosity. Tiny stitches, colour gradients and patterns inspired by stained glass or landscapes: you leave with a whole new view of this domestic craft turned fine art. Every spring, QuiltWeek draws thousands of enthusiasts from around the world.

A creative city recognized by UNESCO

This fervour has not gone unnoticed: in 2013, UNESCO added Paducah to its Creative Cities Network, in the field of crafts and folk art, a distinction very few American cities share. The Lower Town district, with its restored Victorian houses, has filled with studios and galleries where painters, ceramists and fibre artists work. Around the old market house stand a renowned community theatre, a visual arts centre and performance venues that liven up the evenings all year round.

The ripple effect can be seen everywhere: fabric shops popular with quilters from across the continent, open studios and shop windows displaying textile works between two cafés. Even visitors who have never held a needle are won over by the gentle pride that colours conversations here.

At the confluence of two rivers

The town was built at the precise spot where the Tennessee River joins the Ohio, a position that made it a crossroads of steam navigation in the 19th century. The riverside promenade offers a prime vantage point over the ballet of tugboats and their barge tows, among the most imposing on the American river network. The streets of the historic centre, a stone's throw from the landing, line up brick façades, antique dealers, cafés and candy shops in a carefully maintained mid-20th-century atmosphere.

The water that gave the town life also nearly destroyed it: the great flood of 1937 submerged the region and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents, a defining episode the murals recount in detail. The floodwall, built afterward by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, bears witness to this hard-learned lesson, and its gates still close when the Ohio rises in anger.

Ideas for a few hours ashore

• Walk the full length of the painted wall and look for the paddlewheeler mural as well as the one depicting the great flood of 1937.
• Devote a good hour to the National Quilt Museum, a few streets from the river.
• Stroll through Lower Town to meet the artists in their studios.
• Finish with a coffee or an ice cream in the historic centre, watching the barges go by.

As you cast off, you think back on a simple idea that Paducah embodies better than anyone: a community of modest size can shine far and wide when it bets on the hands and imagination of its residents. The floodwall closes behind travellers like the cover of a picture book, and the urge remains to turn a few more pages.