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Get the story behind the places, faces, and current events shaping the downtownATL district.
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The people, buildings, and moments that define downtown Atlanta's identity.
Roughly 35 skybridges cross the streets of Atlanta, most of them concentrated in downtown. Designed by John Portman to let pedestrians move above the noise, they became part of the skyline — and a symbol of a city that built up instead of out.
Nick "Turbo" Benson reimagines Edward Hopper's iconic "Nighthawks" as a Waffle House scene starring Outkast's Big Boi and Andre 3000 — a three-week mural project commissioned for the World Cup on Andrew Young International Boulevard.
Georgia State University's Rialto Center for the Arts is investing $150,000 in renovations, new sound equipment, and a shift to membership-based ticketing — its first significant changes since reopening in 1996.
Ted Turner's modest 800-square-foot apartment atop the former CNN Center in Atlanta, where he lived during his years building CNN and Turner Broadcasting, is being preserved and restored by new building owner CP Group as a nod to Atlanta's history.
Ted Turner, the entrepreneur who founded CNN and put downtown Atlanta on the global map, died on May 6, 2026. His decision to base a 24-hour news network in the city center changed Atlanta's identity forever.
Thirty years after the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, a new documentary reexamines Izzy — the computer-generated mascot that the Associated Press called "the most maligned product to come out of Atlanta since New Coke."
For New Year's Eve 2025, Atlanta officials replaced the traditional Peach Drop with a drone and fireworks show designed to be visible across the entire city — transforming the celebration from a downtown gathering into a citywide spectacle.
After four years of construction, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights on Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard reopened on November 8, 2025 — with $57 million in upgrades, 24,000 new square feet, and a renewed mission at the edge of Centennial Olympic Park.
A documentary examines how Atlanta leveraged its civil rights heritage to win the 1996 Olympics — inviting IOC members to experience the city's history firsthand and proving that the values of the movement and the Games were inseparable.
On October 19, 1960, student leader Lonnie C. King convinced Martin Luther King Jr. to join a lunch counter sit-in at Rich's department store in downtown Atlanta. Fifty-one people were arrested. The city — and the movement — were never the same.
Mayor Dickens announced the return of the Peach Drop to Underground Atlanta for New Year's Eve 2024, with Big Boi headlining, Neon Trees and Res performing, and a giant peach descending from a 100-foot tower at midnight.
On October 28, 1922, a Notre Dame lineman started praying on fourth down at Grant Field in Atlanta. When the play worked — twice — he said, "That Hail Mary is the best play we have." A century later, every desperate last-second throw in football carries the name that was born downtown.
Since 1967, the Hyatt Regency Atlanta's blue dome has been a fixture of downtown's skyline. Inside, the Polaris revolving restaurant offers a 360-degree view that takes one hour to complete — along with rooftop beehives producing 600 pounds of honey a year.
Hulu's "Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told" traces the annual gathering from a Morehouse cookout to a 250,000-person cultural phenomenon — and examines how it shaped Atlanta's identity as the capital of Black America.
Eight galleries, a relocated music venue, a sculptor's studio, and a growing community of artists are transforming Underground Atlanta from a shuttered retail complex into a grassroots creative hub in the center of downtown.
