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Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, opened in 2000 in downtown Gatlinburg, is run by the Ripley Entertainment company. A moving walkway carries visitors through an underwater tunnel of sharks, sea turtles and rays, and other galleries show a coral reef, penguins, jellyfish and touch tanks with horseshoe crabs and stingrays.

Gatlinburg SkyPark sits on Crockett Mountain above downtown Gatlinburg and is reached by the SkyLift, a chairlift running since 1954. At the top, the SkyBridge, opened in 2019, is a pedestrian suspension bridge about 210 metres long with a glass-floored section in the middle, looking over the town and the Great Smoky Mountains.

The Gatlinburg Space Needle is a 124-metre observation tower on the Parkway in downtown Gatlinburg, completed in 1969. Glass elevators carry visitors to an open-air deck with a 360-degree view of the town and the Great Smoky Mountains, and its base holds an arcade and other amusements.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, established in 1934, protects about 2,100 square kilometres of forested mountains on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. Its main Tennessee entrance and the Sugarlands Visitor Center lie just south of Gatlinburg. The park has more than 1,300 km of trails, part of the Appalachian Trail, historic farm buildings in Cades Cove and the Kuwohi summit.

Ober Gatlinburg is a ski area and year-round amusement park on Mount Harrison above Gatlinburg, opened in 1962 and the only ski area in Tennessee. An aerial tramway runs from downtown up the mountain. Besides its ski slopes, it has an indoor ice rink, a wildlife encounter, a scenic chairlift, an alpine slide and a mountain coaster.

Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, about 13 km north-east of downtown Charleston, has been farmed for more than 300 years. It is reached by an avenue of live oaks planted in 1743. The main house dates from 1936, while nine brick cabins built for enslaved people around 1790-1810 house the Black History in America exhibit, telling of those who built and worked the plantation.

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens lies on the Ashley River about 17 km north-west of downtown Charleston, owned by the Drayton family since 1676. Its romantic-style gardens, among the oldest public gardens in the United States, were opened to visitors in the 1870s. Tours visit the main house, and the From Slavery to Freedom tour leads through restored cabins of the enslaved and their descendants.

Middleton Place on the Ashley River, about 24 km north-west of downtown Charleston, was the rice plantation and seat of the Middleton family from the 1740s; Arthur Middleton signed the Declaration of Independence. Its terraced gardens of the 1740s are the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States. The house museum and the stableyards tell of the family and of the enslaved people who worked the rice fields.

Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum lies in Mount Pleasant, across Charleston Harbor from the city. Its centrepiece is the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, commissioned in 1943, whose hangar and flight deck hold some 25 historic aircraft. Visitors also board the destroyer USS Laffey and see a Vietnam-era support base and the Medal of Honor Museum.

The South Carolina Aquarium opened in 2000 on the Charleston Harbor waterfront, with views of the USS Yorktown and the Ravenel Bridge. Its exhibits follow the state's waters from the mountains to the sea, with a two-storey Great Ocean Tank of sharks and loggerhead turtles, touch tanks, river otters, and a sea turtle care centre where injured turtles are treated.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Calhoun Street, known as Mother Emanuel, has one of the oldest Black congregations in the South, founded in 1816-1817. Its co-founder Denmark Vesey was executed in 1822 after a planned slave revolt, and the church was burned. The present Gothic Revival building dates from 1891. On 17 June 2015 nine worshippers were murdered here during Bible study.

Fort Sumter is a brick sea fort on an artificial island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. On 12 April 1861 Confederate batteries opened fire on its Union garrison, the first battle of the American Civil War. Part of a national historical park run by the National Park Service, it is reached by ferry from Liberty Square in Charleston or from Patriots Point.

The Old Slave Mart on Chalmers Street was built in 1859 as part of Ryan's Mart, a market where enslaved people were sold at auction; it is believed to be the last surviving slave-auction building in South Carolina. The museum inside tells of the domestic slave trade in Charleston through documents, objects and the accounts of people who were sold here.

Rainbow Row is a series of thirteen Georgian row houses on East Bay Street in Charleston, built from about 1740 by merchants who kept shops on the ground floor facing the old waterfront. Run-down by the early 20th century, they were restored in the 1930s and 1940s and painted in pastel colours. They are private homes, seen from the street.

The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon at the foot of Broad Street was built in 1767-1771 as a customs house and exchange. South Carolina's delegates to the Continental Congress were chosen here, George Washington was received here in 1791, and during the Revolution the British held prisoners in its cellar. Tours visit the great hall and the dungeon.

The Battery is the seawall and promenade along the southern tip of the Charleston peninsula, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers meet to form Charleston Harbor. Named after a coastal artillery battery, it is lined with 19th-century mansions on East Battery Street and borders White Point Garden, a park with oaks, cannons and monuments, with views towards Fort Sumter.

The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, called the Museum of Science and Industry until 2024, occupies the Palace of Fine Arts of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. Opened in 1933, it shows the German submarine U-505, the Pioneer Zephyr train, a replica coal mine, the Apollo 8 command module and a large model railway.

Fort Pulaski National Monument on Cockspur Island, about 25 km east of Savannah towards Tybee Island, preserves a brick fort completed in 1847. In April 1862 Union rifled cannon breached its walls within two days, showing that masonry forts were obsolete; it later held Confederate prisoners of war. Visitors walk the moat, casemates and ramparts.

The Robie House is a Prairie-style house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1910 for the manufacturer Frederick C. Robie, on the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park. Its long brick walls, bands of art glass windows and cantilevered roofs stress the horizontal. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is seen on guided tours of the interior.

Navy Pier is a pier about a kilometre long on Lake Michigan, opened in 1916 as Chicago's Municipal Pier and renamed in 1927 to honour Navy veterans of the First World War. It holds shops, restaurants, a theatre, a children's museum and boat departures. The Centennial Wheel, opened in 2016, carries enclosed gondolas almost 60 metres high.