Mobile is one of our Best Places to Go in the North America for 2024, part of our global guide to the Best Places to Go in 2024—find more travel inspiration here.
Set on Mobile Bay, along Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the city of Mobile brims with rich culture, natural beauty, and warm Southern hospitality. And starting this year, it’s getting easier to visit: In late June, United will begin non-stop service from Washington Dulles to Mobile Regional Airport, giving Mid-Atlantic travelers a more convenient way to experience the Port City, and a new Amtrak route that will run from New Orleans and through Mississippi is expected to launch later this year. The new accessibility is one reason Mobile made it onto our list of Best Places to Go in 2024, but it’s far from the only one.
Founded by French settlers in 1702, the city’s history and cultural heritage are vividly reflected in its architecture, food scene, music, and festivals. Mardi Gras started here in 1703—the country’s first—and carries on today with rollicking (yet downright family-friendly) parades where floats toss out, among other trinkets and treats, MoonPies.
In recent years, the city has found fresh ways to communicate and honor its African American history with a string of new and forthcoming exhibits, monuments, and public works. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, for example, will be the gateway to the currently-in-development Civil Rights and Cultural Heritage District that aims to honor, preserve, and renew the area along the historic corridor. And later this summer, the new Isom Clemon Civil Rights Memorial Park is set to open, with a cache of statuary paying homage to Mobile’s Civil Rights history, including a 12-foot bronze sculpture of the park’s namesake, the late Civil Rights and labor leader.
Beyond its thriving culinary scene, too, the city is a stone’s throw from white sand beaches and scenic coastal trails, making it easy to experience a little more of Alabama in one visit. Read on for the best things to do in Mobile, Alabama plus can’t miss things to eat and where to stay.
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The best things to do
Last summer, the new Africatown Heritage House unveiled Clotilda: The Exhibition, a collection of artifacts and documents that tells the story of the survivors of the last known ship carrying enslaved people to the city, and Africatown, the community they built. Opened last fall, the Historic Avenue Cultural Center opened with Remembering the Avenue. The interactive exhibition encompasses a series of panels charting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue’s heyday and its subsequent redlining and decline, and engages the community for help recording the history of the corridor known as Black Main Street. The exhibition was created in collaboration with the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, which is also worth a visit. Located downtown across from the tree-lined Cathedral Square, the center is home to rotating exhibitions featuring the work of living artists.