The affluent white suburb of Buckhead is a trendy area of glitzy, youthful malls and swanky hotels. Within the space of two and a half blocks of Peachtree at Paces Ferry Road, celebrity residents such as Elton John can enjoy over a hundred top-quality restaurants. Tucked away nearby, permanent exhibits at the superb Atlanta History Center , 130 W Paces Ferry Rd (Mon-Sat 10am-5.30pm, Sun noon-5.30pm; $10; tel 404/814-4000, ), cover everything from Civil War black politics to women's history, while temporary installations detail city-specific events and personalities. There are also tours of two houses in the extensive grounds: the Swan House , a ponderous 1920s mock-classical mansion, and the Tullie Smith Farm , an antebellum farmhouse and garden. For a further taste of the Tara-style Old South, tour the Governors Mansion , 391 W Paces Ferry Rd (Tues-Thurs 10-11.30am; free).

Downtown Atlanta

Downtown Atlanta is for the most part the usual big-city concentration of glimmering skyscrapers, transformed and overhauled for the 1996 Olympics. Its highlight, however, and the only place open after dark, is Underground Atlanta (or "the Underground"), a four-block subterranean maze of shops, stalls, restaurants and bars on the original site of the city (effectively buried in the late nineteenth century by the construction of railroad viaducts). In the 1970s the district, ranged around Five Points MARTA station, was a crime-ridden wasteland, but, thanks to Andrew Young's dream of a revitalized downtown, it's now one of the liveliest - albeit very touristy - pockets of the city. The underground labyrinth of cobbled gas-lit streets, restored to their original appearance and dotted with historical markers, is reached by steps from a piazza buzzing with street performers.

The eastern side of the piazza is dominated by the super-glossy World of Coca-Cola pavilion (June-Aug Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 11am-6pm; Sept-May Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun noon-6pm; $6, children $3; tel 404/676-5151). This three-story spin through Coca-Cola's history, from its origins in the non-air-conditioned nineteenth-century Hotlanta, through the evolution of the famed contour bottle "embraced by generations" to "the Real Thing," is surprisingly fun. On the third floor you can quench your thirst with a whole host of coke products from all over the world, such as Stoney Ginger Beer from South Africa or Japan's Vegita Beta.

Northwest of the Underground, the CNN Center - a structure that was originally an upmarket shopping mall, and still holds a few small stores - daily achieves a global reach undreamed of by Coca-Cola's founders. The Cable News Network is just one of eleven television networks in the empire developed by Ted Turner, and sold to Time-Warner in 1995. Aptly, among the thousands of MGM classics now stamped with the Turner logo is Gone with the Wind - witness the plethora of Tara, Scarlett and Rhett knickknacks in the giftshop. Unlike the Coke pavilion, this is a working facility - adrenalin-fueled, forty-minute guided tours (daily 9am-6pm, every 15min; $8) rush past frazzled producers and toothy anchorpersons - but you can videotape yourself reading the (real) news of the day ($15 in the giftshop). If you're desperate to be on TV, time your visit to coincide with the 3.30pm filming of TalkBack Live , when visitors are invited to be part of the audience.

Several downtown blocks just northeast of the CNN Center were razed prior to the 1996 Olympics to make way for the open space of Centennial Park , intended as a focus for public festivities during the Games; forced to close almost immediately by the pipe-bombing that killed two revelers, the park has failed to find a post-Olympic identity, and rumors abound that it too will soon be redeveloped.

The Atlanta Public Library , in Margaret Mitchell Square at Carnegie Way and Forsyth Street (Mon-Thurs 9am-9pm, Fri & Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 2-6pm), has a room devoted to Gone with the Wind author and Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell . The novel (1936) and film (1939) helped perpetuate popular images of the genteel plantation South - as well, of course, as the burning of Atlanta. Fantastically popular, the novel took just six weeks to sell enough copies to form a tower fifty times higher than the Empire State Building. The tiny downtown branch of the Atlanta History Center is also here, with videos on city history and information on historical tours. Midtown's High Museum of Art has a downtown satellite gallery at 30 John Wesley Dobbs Ave at Peachtree Street, featuring smaller photography and folk art collections (Mon-Fri 11am-5pm; free).