Art News

Atlanta Olympic Park Area: 3 New Museums, 5 Years,11 Million Atlanta Visitors

This photo taken Nov. 2009 shows two visitors walking by the Olympic ring fountain at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park. AP Photo/Dorie Turner

ATLANTA (AP).- New York City has Times
Square. New Orleans is known for the French Quarter, and in San Francisco,
camera-toting tourists flock to Fisherman’s Wharf. Now, city leaders in Atlanta
hope to add Centennial Olympic Park — and the growing roster of museums dotting
it — to the list of popular urban tourism corridors.
The downtown
district, once home to rundown buildings and dark streets, was transformed in
the mid-1990s into the town square for the 1996 Olympic Games. Now the 21-acre
park is bordered by the world’s largest aquarium, the international headquarters
for CNN, the World of Coca-Cola, a children’s museum and the National Museum of
Patriotism.