Experience the best of Montgomery

Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, on the Alabama River in the heart of the Deep South. It was the first capital of the Confederacy in 1861, and it was the setting of the bus boycott of 1955 to 1956, which followed the arrest of Rosa Parks. Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor, stands near the white-domed State Capitol.

The Rosa Parks Museum, the Freedom Rides Museum in a former bus station, the Civil Rights Memorial and the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which remember victims of lynching and the history of slavery, are the city's main museums. The Selma to Montgomery march of 1965 ended at the Capitol steps. The Hank Williams Museum and the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum honour two other figures who lived here.

Southern cooking is the local food, with fried catfish, barbecue, collard greens, biscuits and banana pudding, and sweet tea in every restaurant. Long, hot, humid summers give way to short, mild winters, and spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons for walking between the downtown memorials and along the riverfront. Selma, where the 1965 march began, and Tuskegee, home of Tuskegee University, are each an hour's drive or less, to the west and east.