4 Best Sights in Birmingham, Alabama

The 1,200 vintage and modern motorcycles comprise what is considered the largest motorcycle collection in America, if not the world. Bikes from 20 countries represent 200 different manufacturers. Also find the largest collection of Lotus racecars in the world here. Birmingham, Alabama, native George Barber grew the array after racing and modifying Porsches in the 1960s. He started collecting and restoring classic sports cars in 1989 and then turned his attention to two-wheelers. The Barber Motorsports Park next door features a 2.3-mile road course that hosts an IndyCar series and the Honda Grand Prix of Alabama.

Historians consider Birmingham the "cradle of the civil rights movement," and this museum traces African Americans' struggle for equality back to the 1800s. A series of galleries show the stark differences between blacks' and whites' daily lives over the years. The Movement Gallery focuses on dramatic episodes of the 1955–63 civil rights movement. Located in the Civil Rights district, the museum can be part of a larger tour including Kelly Ingram Park, where large civil rights demonstrations were staged, and the16th Street Baptist Church, the site of a 1960s bombing that killed four young girls.

Admission is free to three floors housing more than 25,000 paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and decorative arts dating from ancient to modern times. Find the country’s largest museum collection of African ceramics, including 400 clay vessels and figures from across the African continent. The 4,000-object Asian collection is the largest in the Southeast. European, American, pre-Columbian, Native American, and Alabama artists are all represented here. The museum's Oscar's Cafe serves lunch Tuesday through Friday and brunch on some Sundays.

Two 400-ton blast furnaces that fired Birmingham’s longtime, lucrative steel industry are preserved along with boilers, steam-driven blowing engines, and slag granulators. Some 40 buildings, a web of pipes, and tall smokestacks vividly illustrate the 20th-century industrial age, and steel’s hold on the city’s economy. Tours pass enormous machinery and wind through the underground railroad tunnel. Visiting and resident artists exhibit their work and teach metal crafting.