Athens Guide

Athens is a college town that punches ten times its weight in music. Home to the University of Georgia (chartered 1785, the oldest state-chartered university in America) and 40,000 students, it also birthed the B-52s and R.E.M. in the same downtown clubs in the late ’70s and early ’80s — a scene that made this small Georgia town a name in rock history worldwide. Downtown is a dense, walkable grid of bars, record shops, and the 40 Watt Club, the legendary room where it all happened. Add the double-barreled cannon (a Civil War oddity that never worked), the sprawling State Botanical Garden, and a serious food scene, and Athens is the most fun mid-size town in the state.