Austin was staked out in 1839 as Waterloo, renamed for Stephen F. Austin, and nearly lost the capital in the 1842 Archive War. Three days trace that arc: Republic-era buildings, the 1888 Capitol, and the Freedmen's neighbourhoods east of I-35.
Three floors covering 16,000 years, from Clovis points and Caddo mound culture to the La Belle — René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's 1686 shipwreck, raised from Matagorda Bay and reassembled here. Open 10:00-17:00; adults $16.
Opened 1851 for General Edward Burleson, Republic vice-president. Stephen F. Austin lies under an Elisabet Ney sculpture; also here are Albert Sidney Johnston, Barbara Jordan and the Governors' section. Grounds 08:00-17:00 daily.
Built 1841 for Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, chargé d'affaires from Louis-Philippe's France to the Republic of Texas — the oldest surviving house in Austin, and the site of the Pig War diplomatic rupture of 1841. Wed-Sun 12:00-17:00.
Formosa, the 1892 limestone-and-castle studio of German-born sculptor Elisabet Ney, who modelled Schopenhauer and Bismarck before emigrating. Her plaster Austin and Houston studies stand where she carved them. Wed-Sun 12:00-17:00, free.
Completed 1888 in Sunset Red granite from Marble Falls, 92m tall — taller than the US Capitol by design. Paid for with 12,000 sq km of Panhandle land that became the XIT Ranch. Free tours every 30-45 min, 08:30-16:30.
Abner Cook's 1856 Greek Revival house, the fourth-oldest continuously occupied governor's residence in the US. Sam Houston's four-poster bed and the bullet-scarred banister from Governor Pease's era survive the 2008 arson restoration.
Eight floors of travertine on the UT campus holding 45 million pages of Johnson papers, the Civil Rights Act signing pens, and a 7/8-scale Oval Office replica. The animatronic LBJ tells his own jokes. Daily 09:00-17:00.
Paul Cret's 1937 tower, where Charles Whitman's 1966 shooting killed 17 — America's first mass campus shooting. A granite memorial stone by the Turtle Pond was finally dedicated in 2016, fifty years on.
Texas's first African American neighbourhood museum, in East Austin's historically Black district created by the 1928 city plan that forced Black residents east of East Avenue. Juneteenth and Clarksville archives. Mon-Thu 10:00-18:00.
Founded 1871 by Charles Clark, a formerly enslaved man who bought two acres west of Shoal Creek — the oldest surviving freedom colony west of the Mississippi. Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church has stood on West 11th since 1882.
UT's manuscript vault: a complete Gutenberg Bible, the world's first photograph — Niépce's 1826-27 View from the Window at Le Gras — and the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate papers. Galleries Tue-Sun, free entry.
Opened VJ Day 1945 by Johnny Holmes, a Chitlin' Circuit room on East 11th where B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner and Bobby Bland played to segregated Austin. Still standing, still booking blues, on the National Register since 1998.