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Get the story behind the places, faces, and current events shaping the downtownATL district.
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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.
Nearly 23,000 square feet of the former CNN Center — now rebranded as The CTR — will become the ATL Culture House during the World Cup, hosting eight days of live performances, art exhibitions, and youth workshops curated by more than 400 local artists.
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."
An Americana bar with live music, an upscale sports club with a 20-foot TV wall, a 10,000-square-foot grand ballroom, and a rooftop lounge with firepits are stacking four floors of nightlife into a single historic building.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The National Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta announced a $48 million expansion in 2022 — adding two new wings, a 10,000 square-foot education space, and a permanent home for the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection.
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.
The building at 152 Nassau Street in downtown Atlanta — where Fiddlin' John Carson recorded country music's first major hit in 1923 — faces demolition for a Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville Resort. Preservationists are fighting to save it.
