Atlanta Attractions
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Atlanta History Center
Everything from Civil War black politics to women's history, while temporary installations detail city-specific events and personalities.
There are also tours of two houses in the extensive grounds. 130 W Paces Ferry Rd - Mon-Sat 10am-5.30pm, Sun noon-5.30pm $10 - (404) 814-4000
Governors Mansion
Taste of the Tara-style Old South. 391 W Paces Ferry Rd - Tues-Thurs 10-11.30am free.
Underground Atlanta
Four-block subterranean maze of shops, stalls, restaurants and bars on the original site of the city
(effectively buried in the late nineteenth century by the construction of railroad viaducts).
In the 1970s the district, ranged around Five Points MARTA station, was a crime-ridden wasteland,
but, thanks to Andrew Young's dream of a revitalized downtown, it's now one of the liveliest - albeit very touristy - pockets of the city.
The underground labyrinth of cobbled gas-lit streets, restored to their original appearance and dotted with historical markers,
is reached by steps from a piazza buzzing with street performers.
World of Coca-Cola Pavilion
This three-story spin through Coca-Cola's history, from its origins in the non-air-conditioned nineteenth-century Hotlanta,
through the evolution of the famed contour bottle "embraced by generations" to "the Real Thing," is surprisingly fun.
On the third floor you can quench your thirst with a whole host of coke products from all over the world,
such as Stoney Ginger Beer from South Africa or Japan's Vegita Beta. June-Aug Mon-Sat 9am-6pm Sun 11am-6pm - Sept-May Mon-Sat 9am-5pm Sun noon-6pm $6 children $3 (404) 676-5151
Atlanta Public Library
has a room devoted to Gone with the Wind author and Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell .
The novel (1936) and film (1939) helped perpetuate popular images of the genteel plantation South - as well, of course,
as the burning of Atlanta. Fantastically popular, the novel took just six weeks to sell enough copies to form a tower fifty times
higher than the Empire State Building. In Margaret Mitchell Square at Carnegie Way and Forsyth Street - Mon-Thurs 9am-9pm Fri & Sat 9am-6pm Sun 2-6pm
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High Museum of Art
Featuring smaller photography and folk art collections. 30 John Wesley Dobbs Ave at Peachtree Street - Mon-Fri 11am-5pm free.
Cyclorama
A huge circular painting (50ft by 900ft) depicting the Battle of Atlanta, executed by a group of German and Polish artists in 1885-86.
Cycloramas used to travel around the country as entertainment in the days before movies; you sit inside the circle of the painting and
the whole auditorium slowly rotates twice. During the second rotation, a guide provides interesting details about the painting;
look out in particular for the hole in the wagon, originally used as a fire escape. In the accompanying museum,
treating the war from the point of view of the average soldier, banks of distressing statistics are interspersed with photos and memorabilia.
Daily - summer 9:20am-5:30pm rest of year 9:20am-4:30pm $5.
Zoo Atlanta
Features giant pandas from Chengdu and re-creations of African rainforests and other habitats. Daily - summer 9am-6:30pm rest of year 9:30am-5:30pm $15.
In summer, a special zoo shuttle runs from Five Points MARTA station to the park.
Little Five Points District
Center of Atlanta's alternative community, a tangle of thrift stores, secondhand record stores, funky restaurants, body-piercing and branding parlors, bars and clubs.
Carter Presidential Center
Devoted to the peanut farmer who rose to become Georgia state governor and the 39th president of the USA. In addition to viewing film footage and a
reconstruction of his Oval Office (where he spent "tedious hours" in budget meetings, and in his final hours of office negotiated the release of the hostages in Iran),
you can read twelve-year-old Jimmy's school essay on health, in which he earnestly urges his readers to keep their teeth clean. Mon-Sat 9am-4:45pm Sun noon-4:45pm $5, under 17 free.
Michael C. Carlos Museum
huge collection of fine art and antiquities from all continents, in an airy building designed by Michael Graves. Sub-Saharan African art is unusually well represented,
including Nigerian headcrests woven with snake-like tendrils; among the extraordinary pre-Columbian collection, note the Andean Human as a Peanut.
571 S Kilgo St - Mon-Sat 10am-5pm Sun noon-5pm $3 donation (404) 727-4282
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High Museum of Art
You'll find excellent contemporary and non-western exhibitions - particularly strong on African art - on display in the ultra-white glass-and-steel building,
designed by Richard Meier. There's also a good giftshop, and a peaceful little espresso bar in the airy atrium.
1280 Peachtree St NE - Tues-Sat 10am-5pm Sun noon-5pm $8 free Thurs after 1pm (404)773-4444.
Stone Mountain State Park
Centers around a huge dome of granite with a five-mile circumference. You can climb it in around 45 minutes, or take a cable car to the top,
and there are various train rides and so on, but most visitors come to see the massive 90ft by 190ft relief of Confederates Jefferson Davis,
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Work on the colossal sculpture was started in 1924 by Gutzon Borglum, who went on to carve Mount Rushmore in South Dakota,
but was not completed until 1970. Concessions and giftshops down below supply endless souvenir kitsch, and the nightly lasershow in summer
culminates with Elvis's gut-wrenching rendition of Dixie at 9:30pm, free with entrance to park. Daily 6am-midnight attractions daily spring & summer 10am-9pm rest of year 10am-5pm $6 per vehicle.
Hammonds House
Georgia's only museum dedicated to African-American and Haitian art. 503 Peeples St - Tues-Fri 10am-6pm Sat & Sun 1-5pm $2.
Herndon Home
Designed and lived in by Alonzo Herndon, the freed slave who became a barber, founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and went on to be the city's first black millionaire.
Together with his wife (the director of Atlanta University's drama department), and such black luminaries as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington,
he participated in setting up progressive black institutions. The mansion's grand interior, built and crafted by black artisans,
contains the family's original furnishings, including some fine Venetian glass. 587 University Place - Tues-Sat 10am-4:30pm $5.
Wren's Nest
Home of Br'er Rabbit author Joel Chandler Harris. Skewers preconceptions about the Uncle Remus stories propagated by the racist images of Disney's Song of the South.
Harris, a friend of Mark Twain, was a respected journalist whose column for the Atlanta Constitution retold the slave stories he had heard while training as a printer on a plantation newspaper;
recently the dialect has been reappraised as authentically African and the stories as valuable affirmation of a black folk tradition. Regular storytelling sessions take place in the peaceful, untamed garden.
1050 R.D. Abernathy Blvd - Tues-Sat 10am-4pm Sun 1-4pm $3.
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