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Get the story behind the places, faces, and current events shaping the downtownATL district.
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Exhibits, murals, festivals, and the creative scene shaping downtown Atlanta and its neighborhoods.
Ravine, the beloved Atlanta music venue that closed its Midtown location during the pandemic, is returning as Ravine at Underground — a massive two-stage venue spanning 181,000 square feet in a parking garage on Lower Wall Street.
Live Nation Entertainment has committed to leasing a 5,300-seat concert venue at Centennial Yards, the $5 billion megaproject under construction in downtown Atlanta. The venue is slated to open in 2027 as part of the project's 8-acre entertainment district.
Fulton County's Public Art Futures Lab at Underground Atlanta has become downtown's experimental art space, hosting a queer-nightlife photography show curated by artist-in-residence Jordan Young in fall 2024 and a 14-week projection-art residency by Shelly Boehm in 2025.
Centennial Olympic Park's centerpiece is back after months of construction, funded by a $2.5 million Woodruff Foundation grant.
MJQ Concourse, a storied Atlanta nightclub, is set to open Jan. 29 in a transformed space at Underground Atlanta, taking over the legendary former Dante's Down the Hatch location with a futuristic sci-fi makeover.
In fall 2024, travel magazine Fifty Grande named Underground Atlanta a fall destination for its historic nightlife and arts scene.
A $2.5 million grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation is funding new lighting, water, and fog systems for Centennial Olympic Park's most photographed landmark -- work set to run August through December 2024.
Fulton County's most valuable art holding -- 54 concrete columns installed by artist Sol LeWitt in 1999 -- finally got the park to match, plus a second new pocket park nearby on Highland Avenue.
FutureVerse, a Cooper Carry-designed museum backed by Georgia Tech, Emory, and other institutions, aimed to become downtown's first major new attraction in nearly 20 years -- with six galleries exploring AI, space travel, and climate science.
From the streets of Lagos in "Captain America: Civil War" to the sidewalks of New York in "Avengers: Infinity War," downtown Atlanta's blocks have doubled for cities around the world — earning Georgia the nickname Hollywood of the South.
Dragon Con drew 65,000 attendees to downtown Atlanta over Labor Day weekend 2022 — the convention's second year back after going digital-only during the pandemic — and raised a record $190,000 for Open Hand Atlanta.
The Georgia Music Accord, co-chaired by Ludacris and entertainment lawyer Joel Katz, launched a campaign to build a Grammy Museum in downtown Atlanta — backed by a $500,000 state-funded feasibility study and a vision to honor the state that produced James Brown, the Allman Brothers, and R.E.M.
In November 2019, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced that Atlanta would not hold the Peach Drop for New Year's Eve — the first cancellation in the event's 30-year history, driven by the sale of Underground Atlanta and logistical complications.
The 27th annual Peach Drop brought an estimated 80,000 people to Underground Atlanta on New Year's Eve 2015, with T.I. and Sister Hazel headlining a celebration anchored by an 800-pound fiberglass peach dropping from a tower at midnight.
By 2015, MomoCon had outgrown its Georgia Tech origins and moved to the Georgia World Congress Center, drawing 20,000 attendees and 200 vendors — a family-friendly counterpart to Dragon Con's Labor Day spectacle.
