Alabama, United States: Towns to Explore on Foot

Alabama is a southeastern U.S. state where mountain valleys, rivers and Gulf beaches meet a history shaped by Indigenous peoples, colonial powers, slavery, the Civil War and the civil rights movement. From historic cities to coastal landscapes, it offers a wide range of places to explore. Neywo has free audio guides for 4 cities in Alabama, covering 87 narrated places in total, with narration available in 11 languages.

What to see and do in Alabama

Alabama is not defined by one landscape or one story. Its northern mountains, central regions and southern coast each reveal a different side of the state, while its cities connect the history and culture of the Deep South.

Explore Alabama’s history

Indigenous peoples lived in the area for thousands of years before European colonization. Spanish explorers arrived later, followed by French colonists, who founded Mobile in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana. Britain subsequently won the territory, and Alabama became a state in 1819.

The nineteenth century brought the expansion of cotton, which relied widely on enslaved African American labor. Alabama later left the United States to join the Confederate States of America, with Montgomery serving as the Confederacy’s first capital. After the Civil War, the state returned to the Union, but economic hardship continued, and Jim Crow laws remained in force until the 1960s.

Alabama’s constitution also used voter-registration provisions to disenfranchise nearly all African Americans and Native Americans, along with many poor European Americans. The state then became a central setting in the civil rights movement. The Selma to Montgomery marches were among the events that made Alabama central to that struggle.

Today, Alabama’s history includes the stories of Indigenous peoples, colonial powers, slavery, war, exclusion and the fight for civil rights. Understanding these connected chapters is essential to understanding the state.

Visit Birmingham

Birmingham is the largest city represented in Neywo’s Alabama audio guides, with 63 narrated places. Its selection includes Arlington Antebellum Home and Gardens, First United Methodist Church, Sardis Baptist Church and Shady Grove Baptist Church.

These sites reflect different parts of the city’s built and religious history. Exploring them offers a way to encounter Alabama through individual places rather than through a single overview.

Discover Auburn and its university setting

Auburn has 4 narrated places in the Neywo guide. They include the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church and Auburn University Chapel.

College football is deeply woven into Alabama’s culture. The University of Alabama Crimson Tide and Auburn University Tigers are rivals in the Southeastern Conference, and their games attract remarkable crowds. Auburn’s university setting is therefore part of a much broader state tradition, in which sport, education and community identity are closely connected.

See the Gulf coast around Dauphin Island

Dauphin Island has 2 narrated places: Fort Gaines and Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Together, they point to two distinct aspects of the island and its surroundings—military history and the study of the coastal environment.

Dauphin Island is part of Alabama’s southern landscape, where the state reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The coast provides a clear contrast with the Appalachian terrain and mountain valleys of northern Alabama.

Spend time in Gulf Shores

Gulf Shores has 18 narrated places, including Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo, Stanton Creek, Alligator Island and Grass Island. These places introduce the coastal side of Alabama, shaped by waterways, wildlife and the Gulf.

The state’s southern land reaches the Gulf Coastal Plain and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico. Its position near the Gulf also gives southern Alabama a warmer climate than northern areas, while the wider coastal setting supports a diverse array of plants and animals.

Alabama’s landscapes, waterways and climate

Alabama stretches from the Tennessee Valley and Appalachian landscapes in the north to Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico in the south. Northern Alabama includes mountain valleys and Appalachian terrain. The center contains the Piedmont, Canebrake and Black Belt, while farther south the Gulf Coastal Plain leads to the coast.

Water is another defining feature. Alabama has the second-largest inland waterway system in the United States, and rivers and waterways help connect its different environments. The humid subtropical climate varies across the state: the south is generally warmer because it lies closer to the Gulf, while northern areas are somewhat cooler, particularly in the Appalachian Mountains of the northeast.

This variety creates different habitats for plants and animals. A trip through Alabama can therefore move between mountain scenery, central landscapes, rivers, coastal environments and beaches without leaving the state.

Alabama culture, literature and football

College football is one of the clearest expressions of Alabama’s culture. The University of Alabama Crimson Tide and Auburn University Tigers are major rivals, and their games draw crowds averaging more than 100,000 fans for Alabama and more than 80,000 for Auburn.

The state also has a strong literary tradition. Alabama writing often returns to questions of race, gender and war, influenced by the Civil War, Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Works associated with the state include Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump and Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Biographies of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Junior also belong to this literary landscape.

Alabama is known for its Southern culture and its place in the Deep South, sometimes called the Bible Belt. Its religious traditions include Native American and African diaspora faiths, as well as Christianity. The result is a culture shaped by sport, literature, faith and the conflicts that have marked the state’s history.

Explore Alabama with Neywo’s free audio guide

Neywo offers free audio guides for 4 cities in Alabama, with 87 narrated places in total and 3 walking tours. Narration is available in 11 languages. Each story plays as you reach the place, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule.

Download Neywo to explore Alabama while you walk: the app tells the story of each place as you arrive, helping you discover the state through its cities, historic sites, religious buildings, waterways and coastal landscapes.