Columbia
Discover Columbia
A concise introduction to Columbia, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Columbia is the capital of South Carolina and sits where three rivers meet to form the Congaree. It was built to be a capital — laid out on a grid in 1786 as one of the first planned capital cities in the United States, on a site chosen because it was in the middle of the state rather than because anything was already there.
In February 1865 most of it burned during Sherman’s march, and responsibility for the fire is still argued about locally. The State House survived, and six bronze stars set into its western wall mark where Federal artillery struck it. The grounds around it carry monuments that have been the subject of sustained public argument; the Confederate battle flag was removed from them in 2015.
The University of South Carolina occupies much of downtown, with the Horseshoe — its original early nineteenth-century quadrangle — at the centre. The Riverbanks Zoo and Garden straddles the river, and the Columbia Museum of Art and the state museum are both central. Half an hour south-east, Congaree national park protects the largest remaining tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the country, with some of the tallest trees in eastern North America and, for two weeks in May, synchronous fireflies. Summers here are long and very humid.