Start from 30 curated places around Auburn, AL, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Acre
A farm-to-table Southern restaurant two blocks from Toomer's Corner, set in a converted house with a kitchen garden out back and sourcing from local farms throughout Lee County. The menu reads as modern Southern -- think seasonal vegetables treated as seriously as the proteins -- and the bar program leans into Alabama-appropriate bourbon and craft cocktails. It is consistently the benchmark against which other Auburn restaurants are measured.
The Depot
Gulf-coastal seafood served in the restored historic Auburn train depot, a soaring industrial-Victorian space with exposed brick and high ceilings. The restaurant holds a James Beard Smart Catch Leader designation for sustainable seafood sourcing and has won the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence multiple years running. The menu pivots toward Alabama's freshest coastal catch and the cooking is confident and restrained -- no heavy sauces, no gimmicks.
Trails & outdoors
Chewacla State Park Trail
A 2.3-mile moderate loop through one of Alabama's oldest state parks, skirting 26-acre Lake Chewacla and passing through a CCC-built stone dam landscape before arriving at a 34-foot waterfall -- the park's signature set piece. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the entire infrastructure here in the 1930s and the stonework holds up as handsome as the day it was laid. Four miles south of campus, it is Auburn's most accessible genuine nature experience.
Lower Chewacla State Park
A 5.5-mile moderate loop in Chewacla State Park that drops below the main lake trail into the creek drainages and forested ridgelines the shorter loop misses. Popular with trail runners, mountain bikers, and birders, this route gives the park a different character -- quieter, more technical in sections, and more likely to feel genuinely wild. Combined with the main loop, it turns a quick visit into a half-day.
Things to do
Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center
East Alabama's main performing arts venue, anchored by a 1,202-seat proscenium theater and a 3,500-capacity outdoor amphitheater on the Auburn University campus. The season runs from classical chamber music through Broadway tours, opera, and nationally touring Americana and folk acts. It is substantially larger in ambition and program than most university towns can sustain, and the acoustics in the indoor hall have been praised by performers and visitors alike.
Auburn University Raptor Center
A rehabilitation and education program for injured Alabama raptors, part of the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine, where non-releasable hawks, falcons, owls, and eagles serve as education ambassadors during live demonstrations at an outdoor amphitheater. Birds are free-flown from towers during shows; the combination of proximity and narration about wildlife conservation is genuinely affecting for visitors of any age. Reservations required.
Landmarks & sights
Toomer's Corner
The intersection of College Street and Magnolia Avenue is where downtown Auburn and the university have shared the same sidewalk corner since the 1850s. Two live oak trees rise above the power lines here, and after every Auburn athletic win fans pack the corner and send rolls of toilet paper into the branches in a tradition rooted in ticker-tape telegraph celebrations from the early twentieth century. The corner anchors the town's identity more than any building on campus.
Samford Hall
The red-brick clock tower completed in 1889 is the most photographed building in Auburn and the anchor of the Auburn University Historic District, which sits on the National Register of Historic Places. Bricks salvaged from the previous Main Building, destroyed by fire in 1887, are woven into the walls. At noon, the electronic carillon in the tower plays the Auburn fight song over the entire campus green.