Park Square is the heart of Paola — a leafy two-block green at the centre of town, surrounded on four sides by late 19th-century brick storefronts. The square was laid out in 1857, when the town was founded, and is unusually large for a Kansas town of this size. Tall oaks, a Civil War-era cannon, the limestone Soldiers and Sailors Monument from 1887, and a Victorian bandstand fill the interior; the perimeter buildings are mostly two- and three-storey commercial blocks in the typical brick-and-stone style of the Plains in their prosperous prairie-railroad years.
The whole ensemble is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A free walking-tour brochure available at the visitor center identifies the most notable buildings and tells some of their stories — failed banks, opera houses converted to grocery stores, the original 1899 Carnegie library a block away. The town's Old Settlers Day in September and the Roots Festival in August both centre on the square.