Little Five Points to Emory University Travel Guide

Northeast of Auburn Avenue, around Euclid and Moreland avenues, the youthful Little Five Points district is the center of Atlanta's alternative community, a tangle of thrift stores, secondhand record stores, funky restaurants, body-piercing and branding parlors, bars and clubs. By way of contrast, just a few blocks north at 1 Copenhill Ave, on the hill where Sherman is said to have watched Atlanta burn, the Carter Presidential Center is devoted to the peanut farmer who rose to become Georgia state governor and the 39th president of the USA. In addition to viewing film footage and a reconstruction of his Oval Office (where he spent "tedious hours" in budget meetings, and in his final hours of office negotiated the release of the hostages in Iran), you can read twelve-year-old Jimmy's school essay on health, in which he earnestly urges his readers to keep their teeth clean (Mon-Sat 9am-4.45pm, Sun noon-4.45pm; $5, under 17 free).

Northeast of here, beyond the yuppie Virginia-Highland restaurant district, the trek to Emory University 's campus is rewarded by the stylish Michael C. Carlos Museum , 571 S Kilgo St (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; $3 donation; tel 404/727-4282), which has a huge collection of fine art and antiquities from all continents, in an airy building designed by Michael Graves. Sub-Saharan African art is unusually well represented, including Nigerian headcrests woven with snake-like tendrils; among the extraordinary pre-Columbian collection, note the Andean Human as a Peanut .