With a metropolitan area population of more than six million people sprawled over 134 square miles, the area is the largest in the southeast. Famous for its super-busy airport, the HQ of CNN, the HQ of Coca-Cola, and its four professional sports teams, the city itself is only about 460,000 people. Their baseball team, the Braves won the World Series in 2021. It hosts the Carter Presidential Library among its attractions that include the Fox Theater, the High Art Museum, and several attractions in the former location of the 1996 Olympics Park.

Carter Library © John Suddath

Fox Theatre © John Suddath

It’s also notorious for its busy Interstate Highway traffic so we parked our car and stayed in Midtown near the Art Museum and Symphony Hall. We were close enough to be able to walk to both, and it was only a short drive to the Botanical Gardens. Just try not to get to confused with Peachtree this and Peachtree that. Most folks don’t know that the city has four rail lines with about three dozen stations. We took the train downtown, and we were within walking distance of most of the major attractions. The city is ranked 3rd in LGBTQ+ population after San Francisco and Seattle with about three dozen bars at one time. The infamous male strip club just closed recently.

High Museum © John Suddath

Symphony Hall © John Suddath

Botanical Gardens © John Suddath

Although the city has direct Amtrak service to New York, the trip takes a long time, so most people fly. The airport has major international service as well as non-stop service to both coasts and is accessible via the local rail line. At one time, to get to any location in North Carolina you had to go through either Atlanta or Charlotte. The joke was, “it didn’t matter if you were going to heaven or hell, you had to go through Atlanta to get there.”

Georgia Aquarium © John Suddath

We went there in late spring and missed the heat and were in season for the symphony. Perhaps the most famous arts figure was Robert Shaw, known for his conducting of choral works, who also was music director of the symphony for 21 years.

In politics, the city is progressive, while much of the rest of rural Georgia is very conservative. In part, much of that is the result of massive growth during and following WWII, in which the city rapidly expanded in population. Of course, most of the downtown area was burned at the end of the Civil War, and other historic buildings have been torn down. The Cyclorama, the Civil War Museum and panoramic painting, recently was moved from its original building to the History Museum. The business leadership has tended to look to the future rather than the past.

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