- Atlanta is an enormous city with attractions growing as fast as its population.
- Here's a local's complete guide on everything you should do, eat, and see in Atlanta, Georgia.
- Visit Insider's hub for travel guides, tips, and recommendations.
It's hard to get a full sense of Atlanta — it's a city without natural boundaries and a massive metropolitan expanse encompassing 29 counties, with a whopping 242 distinct neighborhoods.
With lots of sunshine, plentiful outdoor activities, and thousands of restaurants and bars, the A can be an exciting but daunting place to visit. Each time I visited before moving here in 2020, I'd leave knowing there was so much more to see.
Nicknamed the Emerald City, the City in a Forest, the Hollywood of the South, the Silicon Peach, and even Hotlanta (strictly by nonlocals!), Atlanta proper is traditionally bounded by I-285, a nonsensically circular highway that Atlantans call "the perimeter." It's within these confines that you'll find iconic ITP — or "in the perimeter" — neighborhoods like midtown, downtown, Virginia-Highland, Decatur, Buckhead, Kirkwood, Edgewood, and Old Fourth Ward.
A big radius outside the perimeter, or OTP, has become important to the city's identity and attractions as well. Suburbs like Roswell, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, and Smyrna — and even as far as Kennesaw and Norcross — are critical to Atlanta's developing culture and exploding commercial and residential growth.
More and more, this green metropolis is giving way to glass as trendy subdivisions and work/live/play developments crop up to accommodate a population boom of roughly 80,000 new residents each year.
With corporations relocating to this lively city, the movie industry's continued presence, and an influx of young professionals, the answer to the question "What's popping?" can only be Atlanta. Here are my top tips as a local to see the best Atlanta has to offer on your trip.