Visiting Auburn, United States: Top Sights on Foot

Auburn, Alabama, is a university city with a rich educational history and landmarks connected to African American heritage. The best things to do in Auburn include exploring Auburn University, visiting a free university art museum, and seeing historic buildings that preserve important stories from the city’s past. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Auburn with four narrated places.

What to See in Auburn

Auburn University

Auburn University has shaped the city since it was chartered in 1856. It began as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts school affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1872, the Morrill Act made it Alabama’s first land-grant university, and it became the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama.

The institution continued to evolve. Auburn became the state’s first four-year coeducational school in 1892, adopted the name Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1899, and finally became Auburn University in 1960. Today, it is one of Alabama’s two flagship public universities and the state’s second-largest, with more than 34,000 students and over 1,400 faculty members.

The university is recognised as a top research institution with very high research activity. It is also one of only thirteen universities in the United States to hold land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant designations simultaneously. Its programmes in architecture, engineering, and business are especially well regarded. A second campus in Montgomery joined the Auburn system in 1967.

Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art

The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art is located on the Auburn University campus and is completely free to visit. It is Alabama’s only university art museum with national accreditation, placing it among the country’s top tier of museums.

The museum also has a personal origin story. Albert Smith, who graduated from Auburn in 1947, gave it to honour his wife, Jule, on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Since opening, the museum has received accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums, first in 2013 and again in 2022. It offers a cultural stop alongside the university’s historic campus.

Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church

Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church preserves an important chapter of Auburn’s African American history. It was the first African American church built in the Auburn area after the Civil War, which ended in 1865. The congregation formed during Reconstruction, when newly freed people were establishing their own institutions.

Church members built the structure themselves from hand-hewn logs, transporting the timber from miles away by mule. The building was completed around 1870, and the congregation worshipped there for nearly a century, until 1969.

The Auburn Heritage Association restored the church in 1970, preserving its original log construction. On May 21, 1975, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its importance as a landmark of African American history in Alabama.

Auburn University Chapel

The Auburn University Chapel is one of the campus’s oldest surviving buildings. It is the second-oldest building at Auburn University and the oldest still standing in its original location.

Its quiet presence offers a different perspective on the university’s long history. Alongside the larger campus buildings and academic institutions, the chapel helps show how Auburn’s character has developed over time.

Explore Auburn with Neywo

There is no scheduled tour to join: Neywo’s free Auburn audio guide includes four narrated places, with narration available in 11 languages. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule. Download Neywo to explore Auburn while discovering its university history, art, and historic landmarks.

Auburn is part of Alabama, in the United States.