3 Best Sights in Montgomery, Alabama

One million red bricks adorn this striking 100,000-square-foot theater complex, worth seeing for its classical architecture and lovely 250 acres of English-style grounds and lake alone. Three works by William Shakespeare are among 14 productions staged annually in two theaters. Other famous playwrights round out the schedule along with musicals, concerts, and new works.

Travel back 100-plus years along six blocks of restored structures that illustrate Montgomery life long ago. Elegant Victorian pieces furnish the central, circa-1850s Ordeman House, a contrast to the village's humble log cabin and simple church, school, and tavern. The Landmarks Foundation that runs the site found so many relics during restorations of 19th- and 20th-century buildings that it launched the nearby Rescued Relics, a nonprofit salvage warehouse offering historic architectural elements and materials.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the 20th pastor of this church that started in a slave trader’s pen in 1877. The humble, little, redbrick structure hardly signals its significant past. King directed initial civil rights activity in Montgomery, including the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott, from his church office. The church and parsonage, where King and his family lived between 1954 and 1960, are both open for tours. Church services happen each Sunday.