Centennial Olympic Park
The public heart of Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic Games, built for the hundredth anniversary of the modern Games and kept as a downtown park.
At a glance
Centennial Olympic Park is a green square in the middle of downtown Atlanta, ringed by museums and towers. It was created as the gathering place of the 1996 Summer Olympics and never went away, becoming the civic park the city had lacked.
History
Atlanta hosted the Games of 1996, the Centennial Olympics, marking one hundred years since the first modern Olympics of 1896. To give the Games a public heart, the city cleared a stretch of downtown and laid out this park, some twenty-one acres of lawn, plaza and fountain, opened in 1996.
The Games left a shadow here too: on 27 July 1996 a bomb was set off in the park during a late-night concert, killing two people and injuring many more. The park reopened within days and has since stood as a place of both celebration and memory.
What you see
The centrepiece is the Fountain of Rings, laid out in the five interlocking circles of the Olympic symbol, where jets of water rise and fall for crowds of children in summer. Across the lawns, engraved bricks bought by donors from around the world pave the paths — a floor of names that helped fund the park — alongside markers to the host city and the hundred-year milestone.
Significance
Few Olympic sites survive as living public space. Centennial Olympic Park did, and it reshaped downtown Atlanta around it: the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola and other institutions rose on its edges in the years that followed. It remains the clearest legacy of the 1996 Games in the city that hosted them.
Practical information
- Free and open daily
- The Fountain of Rings runs on a seasonal schedule
- Surrounded by the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola and the College Football Hall of Fame
Getting there
The park sits in downtown Atlanta between Marietta Street and International Boulevard. The nearest MARTA rail stations are Peachtree Center and GWCC/CNN Center, each a short walk; the area is walkable and well served by buses.
Gallery
Centennial Olympic Park, photographed by Luigi De Marchi.
Sources
- Georgia World Congress Center Authority — Centennial Olympic Park (gwcca.org)
- Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau (discoveratlanta.com)
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