Explore Atlanta

The College Football Hall of Fame moved to downtown Atlanta in 2014, next to Centennial Olympic Park; its facade is shaped like a giant football. Founded in 1951 by the National Football Foundation, it honours the players and coaches of American college football, with interactive exhibits, team memorabilia and an indoor practice field.

World of Coca-Cola is the museum of the Coca-Cola Company, which was founded in Atlanta in 1886. Opened in 2007 on Pemberton Place beside Centennial Olympic Park, it shows the history of the drink and its advertising, the vault said to hold the secret formula, a bottling line, and a tasting room with over 100 drinks from around the world.

The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, opened in 2014 beside Centennial Olympic Park, is a museum on the American civil rights movement and on human rights worldwide. Its galleries include an interactive lunch-counter sit-in, the Morehouse College collection of Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers, and exhibits on present-day human rights struggles.

The Fox Theatre on Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta opened in 1929 as a film palace in a Moorish and Egyptian style, first planned as a Shriners' temple. Saved from demolition in the 1970s, its 4,665-seat auditorium under an artificial night sky now hosts touring Broadway shows, concerts, comedy and the Atlanta Ballet.

The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, east of downtown Atlanta, holds the papers of the 39th president and is run by the National Archives. Its museum covers Carter's life from his childhood in Plains, Georgia, to his presidency and humanitarian work, with a full-size replica of the Oval Office and his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize; Japanese gardens surround the buildings.

The High Museum of Art on Peachtree Street in Midtown is the largest art museum in the south-eastern United States, founded in 1905. Its white enamel-panelled building by Richard Meier opened in 1983 and was extended by Renzo Piano in 2005. The collection of more than 20,000 works is strong in American decorative arts, folk and self-taught art, modern art and photography.

The Atlanta History Center in Buckhead, north of downtown, is a history museum founded in 1926 on a 13-hectare campus. Its galleries cover Atlanta's past and the Civil War, and they display the restored Cyclorama painting of the Battle of Atlanta. The grounds include the 1928 Swan House mansion, the Smith Family Farm and historic gardens.