Discover 11 hidden attractions, cool sights, and unusual things to do in Rome (United States). Don't miss out on these must-see attractions: Forum Civic Center, Myrtle Hill Cemetery, and Blossom Hill. Also, be sure to include Historic Courthouse in your itinerary.
Below, you can find the list of the most amazing places you should visit in Rome (Georgia).
Table of Contents
Forum Civic Center
Event venue in Rome, Georgia. The Forum River Center is a multi-purpose arena and convention center in Rome, Georgia, United States. It seats 2,140 for arena football, up to 3,116 for other sporting events and up to 3,932 for concerts. For trade shows, it can accommodate 21,000 square feet of space. Meeting rooms at the Forum total an additional 14,269 square feet of space. Floyd County owns the Forum. The Forum was previously home to the Georgia Fire indoor football team.[1]
Address: 2 Government Plz, 30161-2804 Rome
Myrtle Hill Cemetery
Cemetery in Rome, Georgia. Myrtle Hill Cemetery is the second oldest cemetery in the city of Rome, Georgia. The cemetery is at the confluence of the Etowah River and Oostanaula River and to the south of downtown Rome across the South Broad Street bridge.[2]
Address: Branham Ave. At South Broad St, 30161 Rome
Blossom Hill
Summit in Georgia. Blossom Hill is a summit in Rome, Georgia. With an elevation of 784 feet, Blossom Hill is the 901st highest summit in the state of Georgia. It is considered to be one of the Seven Hills of Rome, Georgia. Jackson Hill is located about 0.3 miles south of the summit.
Blossom Hill was named from the fact a local girl picked flowers there. In 1939, the Bruce Hamler Water Treatment Plant, named for a former city manager, was constructed on the hill in 1939.[3]
Historic Courthouse
Building in Rome. The Floyd County Administration Building at Fourth Avenue and East First Street in Rome, Georgia was built in 1896 and extended in 1904, 1911, and 1941. It was formerly known as the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse and has also been known as the Federal Building and Post Office. Its exterior reflects Second Renaissance Revival styling. In 1975 its first floor had a large workroom area for the post office. The second floor had the courtroom plus offices of judge and clerk. The third floor, under a low angle roof, had room for some offices and was otherwise attic space. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 as "U.S. Post Office and Courthouse" for its architecture, at a time when the building was vacant and awaiting adaptive reuse.
The 1975 nomination to the NRHP was written by an architectural historian of Atlanta, Elizabeth Z. Macgregor. She named no original or subsequent architect to be credited, but she knowledgeably described the building in some detail as quite a competent work, finding it:
significant architecturally as an example of the Second Renaissance Revival style structure. In the Rome area this is the only building designed in this style. / From a strict sense the U. S. Post Office and Courthouse is a combination of details of decorative relief work reflective of the earlier nineteenth century Renaissance Revival Italian Mode; however the general effect is a well coordinated horizontal design that has obvious influences from the later Second Renaissance Revival.
Postcard views from c. 1908 and from the 1940s shows views. It was purchased by the Floyd County Board of Commissioners in 1975.
It serves now as the County Administration Building, at 12 East First Street. The Commissioners Meeting Room, on the second floor, is presumably the old courtroom space.
The current Federal Building in Rome is at 600 East First Street. It includes a U.S.P.S. facility (the Martha Berry Post Office), a United States Bankruptcy Court, and more.[4]
Address: 101 W 5th Ave, Rome
Oak Hill & The Martha Berry Museum
Oak Hill & The Martha Berry Museum is the home and museum about Berry College founder Martha Berry located in Rome, Georgia, United States. It is also an All-America Selections Display Garden, a part of Berry Schools on the National Register of Historic Places, and a AAA Star Attraction.[5]
Address: 24 Veterans Memorial HWY, 30149 Mount Berry
Chieftains Museum
Museum in Rome, Georgia. Chieftains Museum, also known as the Major Ridge Home, is a two-story white frame house built around a log house of 1792 in Cherokee country. It was the home of the Cherokee leader Major Ridge. He was notable for his role in negotiating and signing the Treaty of New Echota of 1835, which ceded the remainder of Cherokee lands in the Southeast to the United States. He was part of a minority group known as the Treaty Party, who believed that relocation was inevitable and wanted to negotiate the best deal with the United States for their people.
The chiefs had agreed they could not go to war against the United States on the removal issue, but most other Cherokee opposed Ridge and the Treaty Party. He and some other members of the Treaty Party were assassinated after most of the tribe was removed to what became the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, for having ceded the tribe's communal lands, as this was considered a capital crime.[6]
Address: 501 Riverside Pkwy NE, 30161-2903 Rome
DeSoto Theater
Theater in Rome, Georgia. The DeSoto Theatre is a theater in downtown Rome, Georgia, in the United States. The DeSoto Theatre was the first theater in the southeast to display Sound Movies. It is currently owned by the Historic DeSoto Theatre Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by the building's former owner and current resident theatre group, the Rome Little Theatre. The previous building was home to the Freedmen's Bureau of Rome. In early 1908 O. C. Lam, the owner of Lam Amusement Company, laid plans to construct a new movie theater in downtown Rome, Georgia. Lam wanted to build a movie palace, a luxurious theater modeled after New York's Roxy. Lam purchased a section of prime real estate on the main street of downtown Rome for $37,000.
The building's exterior and Georgian interior stylishly housed a number of recent movie palace innovations. Designed as a "talkie" theater, it the first venue in the South to be designed and built for sound pictures. Rome's new house boasted a Vitaphone sound system. And, the theater was heated and cooled by an innovative blower-fan air conditioning and tubular boiler system. Additionally, the theater was equipped with state-of-the-art fire safety equipment. Fitted with many exits, the theater could be emptied in two minutes.
Lam named his new movie palace for Hernando DeSoto, who was thought by many historians to have passed through the area that is now Rome in 1600. DeSoto was completed at a cost of $110,000 and opened in August 1927. The theater seated 1,500, making it one of the seven largest movie venues in Georgia at the time. The theater was an instant success and the pride of Rome. The DeSoto was one of the main sources of entertainment for Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama for the next thirty years.[7]
Clock Tower
Historical landmark in Rome, Georgia. The Clock Tower in Rome, Georgia is one of the oldest landmarks in the city. The Clock Tower is located at the summit of Clock Tower Hill one of the Seven Hills of Rome.[8]
Address: 1st Street, Rome
Alhambra-Home on the Hill
Alhambra-Home on the Hill was built in 1832 by Major Philip Walker Hemphill, a planter born in Chester County, South Carolina, and was one of four founders of Rome. The land was deep in Cherokee Indian Nation and is now known as the oldest house in Floyd County, Georgia.[9]
Sara Hightower Regional Library System
The Sara Hightower Regional Library System is a system of 6 public libraries in the Northwest Georgia region serving Chattooga County, Polk County and Floyd County. The headquarters of the library system is located in Rome, Georgia at the Rome-Floyd County Library.
Patrons of the library receive a PINES library card. This card may be used at any of the 275 libraries affiliated with the program across Georgia, as well as the 6 branches in the Sara Hightower Regional Library System, and is open to all Georgia residents. The SHRLS is also affiliated with the GLASS (Georgia Libraries for Accessible Statewide Services) program which offers library services for the blind and physically handicapped.
Because of its size, encompassing multiple counties in northwestern Georgia, SHRLS has one of the highest interlibrary loan percentages in the state, with approximately 30,000 books on ILL over the 2015 year.[10]
Tomb of the Known Soldier
War memorial in Rome, Georgia. The Tomb of the Known Soldier is a grave site in Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Rome, Georgia, United States, dedicated to a soldier killed in World War I, Private Charles Graves.[11]