Atlanta Cyclorama | Atlanta, Georgia
800 Cherokee Ave. S.E.Atlanta GA 30315
Phone: 404-658-7625
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Atlanta’s Civil War battle sites are mostly covered up by concrete these days, but if you want to see what it was like on the sultry day of July 22, 1864, when Union troops marched into town to battle with the Confederate Army, just step into the Cyclorama. On that day Confederate troops led by General John B. Hood made a desperate attempt to save Atlanta from the encircling Union armies. They were initially successful, but the Union troops, led by Major General William T. Sherman, regained positions lost earlier in the day and won the battle. By nightfall, more than 12,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing.
German artists spent a year painting their vision of the horrific battle. The cyclorama of the battle is the world’s largest oil painting. The diorama, a three-dimensional foreground for the painting, was added in 1836.
It is said that when actor Clark Gable visited Atlanta in 1939 for the premier of "Gone With the Wind," he joked to Atlanta city officials that the only thing missing from the diorama of the Battle of Atlanta was a likeness of Rhett Butler. Today, Cyclorama guides point out the plaster of Paris likeness of Rhett created after that remark.
You will begin your visit with a 14-minute film about events leading up to the battle, followed by the cyclorama/diorama audio and visual presentation. Artifacts from the war are displayed in the Civil War Museum as well as the famous steam locomotive known as the Texas, which took part in the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862.
VIEW INTERACTIVE MAP Take a do-It-Yourself Tour of Margaret Mitchell's Atlanta and environs.
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Margaret Mitchell’s Tara
Margaret Mitchell may have written her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from a small, first-floor apartment at 10th and Peachtree streets in Atlanta, but the story was born from the red clay backroads that once wound mostly through Clayton and Fayette counties. Browse the photo gallery below to see some of the places in Atlanta, Jonesboro and Fayetteville that tell the story of Margaret Mitchell and Gone With the Wind.
For more about Mitchell and Gone With the Wind, see the Brown's Guide blogs: In Search of Margaret Mitchell's Tara, Tara, Margaret Mitchell and the Flint River, and Where Was Margaret Mitchell's Tara, Really?
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Related Blogs
In Search of Margaret Mitchell’s Tara
Margaret Mitchell may have written her Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gone With the Wind from a small first-floor apartment at 10th and Peachtree streets in Atlanta, but the story was born from the red clay backroads that once wound mostly through Georgia’s Clayton and Fayette counties.
Tara, Margaret Mitchell and the Flint River
The Flint River is only a 20-foot wide, winding stream between Fayette and Clayton counties, but this portion of it has played an integral part in literary history—it bordered the fictional Tara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.
Where Was Margaret Mitchell’s Tara, Really?
Hollywood director David O. Selznick's celluloid version of Tara was not exactly what Margaret Mitchell had in mind when she wrote her epic Civil War novel, Gone With the Wind.
