21 Best Sights in Central North Carolina, North Carolina

A Gothic-style gem built in the early 1930s, this chapel is the centerpiece of Duke University. Modeled after England's Canterbury Cathedral, it has a 210-foot-tall bell tower. Weekly services are held here Sunday at 11 am, with tours following. The chapel is a popular wedding spot, so check the website before trying to visit on Saturday.

Set in a wooded 183-acre wildlife preserve, this was the site of the first Moravian settlement in North Carolina. The reconstructed village showcasing the mid-18th-century community includes the original 1788 Gemeinhaus congregation house, a colonial homestead, and well-maintained medicinal gardens. God's Acre, the first colony cemetery, is a short walk away. Children love the reconstructed fort from the French and Indian War, and hiking trails head off into the hills around the settlement. Brochures for self-guided walking tours are available year-round at the visitor center, where interpreters in period attire help bring this bygone era to life.

On the west side of Raleigh, the NCMA houses more than 5,000 years of artistic heritage, including one of the nation's largest collections of Jewish ceremonial art. The museum hosts touring exhibitions of works by such artists as Caravaggio and Rodin. There are gallery tours offered daily, and on Saturdays at 10:30 you can catch a guided tour of the surrounding park. The 164-acre park features nine monumental works of art, which visitors can view on foot or by bike.

With seven floors of immersive exhibits spread across two buildings connected via sky bridge, this museum is the largest of its kind in the Southeast. Exhibits and dioramas celebrate the incredible diversity of species in the state's various regions. There are enough live animals and insects—including butterflies, snakes, and a two-toed sloth—to qualify as a midsize zoo. Massive and rare whale skeletons hang from the ceiling. The pièce de résistance, however, is the Terror of the South exhibit, featuring the dinosaur skeleton of "Acro," a giant carnivore that lived in the region 110 million years ago. The impressive bones are the world's most complete Acrocanthosaurus dinosaur skeleton. In the Nature Research Center, visitors can have live conversations with scientists.

A wisteria-draped gazebo, the Carnivorous Plant Collection, and a Japanese garden with a lily pond teeming with fat koi fish are a few of the highlights of these 55 acres in Duke University's West Campus. More than 5 miles of pathways meander through formal plantings and woodlands. The Terrace Café serves lunch weekdays and brunch Saturday and Sunday seasonally.

These two public gardens offer a relaxing retreat along a stream that runs between two busy roads. The Bicentennial Garden houses sculptures (including large-scale interactive wind chimes), a Sensory Garden, a pétanque court, and a reconstructed mill and waterwheel. The Bog Garden includes wooden walkways that meander over water and wetlands.

The permanent holdings at this impressive museum include 20,000 works, with one of the Southeast's strongest collections of Asian art. There's an outstanding selection of drawings, prints, and photographs as well as Old Master paintings and sculptures. The museum hosts regular lunch panels, film forums, and guest lectures. Be sure to say hello to the museum's namesake, William Hayes Ackland, whose modernist tomb is on-site.

In the center of Raleigh's Warehouse District, the Contemporary Art Museum hosts a rotating display of art exhibitions and cultural events. The glass-enclosed, folded-roof design nods to the neighborhood's train depot and industrial loading docks, welcoming visitors to its intimate galleries. First Fridays stay open late for a local vendor market.

A stroll along the tree-lined streets of this campus, founded in 1924, is a lovely way to spend a few hours. Tours of the campus, known for its Georgian and Gothic revival architecture, are available during the academic year and can be arranged in advance.

Since 1891, this 37,500-square-foot brick Queen Anne–style structure, made entirely from materials from the Tar Heel State, with elaborate gingerbread trim and manicured lawns, has been the home of the state's governors. Encompassing an entire city block, the brick-walled gardens explode with color during the spring. Reservations for tours must be made at least two weeks in advance.

NC State has one of the country's top public-university design programs, and this free museum gives a taste of the creativity and innovation that has fueled the college. Selections from the museum's 54,000-item collection of textiles, decorative arts, ceramics, photography, and folk art rotate in a semipermanent exhibition, while the other galleries display several shows a year on everything from inflatable sculpture to metal jewelry to biotechnology. Behind the museum is a pollinator garden designed by horticulture students.

Wander through the 1786 John Haley House and the 1801 Hoggatt House, where rotating exhibits highlight Piedmont history and Quaker heritage with local artifacts. On Saturdays, costumed reenactors demonstrate trades like traditional blacksmithing. The museum is home to native son John Coltrane's childhood piano and a school bus cab with operational lights that's fun for kids.

The university's working, research, and teaching 10-acre garden holds the most diverse collection of hardy temperate-zone plants in the southeastern United States. There's also a garden featuring plants with white flowers and foliage and a 300-foot-long perennial border.

A highlight of any Duke visit, this museum displays African, American, European, and Latin American artwork. The collection includes works by Henri Matisse, Kehinde Wiley, and Pablo Picasso. The museum offers a steady stream of engaging events throughout the year.

The only dedicated house museum to an African American person in the state, this historic house was built for Dr. Manassa Thomas Pope around 1900 with all the modern conveniences of the time. Dr. Pope had been a military surgeon during the Spanish American War, then the first practicing black doctor in North Carolina, and later a mayoral candidate in the heavily segregated Jim Crow era. The two Columbia-educated daughters of Dr. Pope maintained the house until the 1990s, preserving 3,000 artifacts that give a glimpse of the life of a prominent black family in the 20th century.

The always-changing exhibits at this tucked-away museum near the Wake Forest campus showcase artwork—including large-format sculpture displays—by nationally and internationally known artists. The attached historic Hanes House has been renovated with contemporary designer furnishings comfortable for attending a Fireside Chat, reading an art magazine, or just enjoying the view of the grounds outside.

One block north of the State Capitol, this complex hums with lawmakers and lobbyists when the legislature is in session. It's fun to watch from the third-floor gallery. Free guided tours are available but must be scheduled in advance through Capitol Area Services.

Set on the campus of UNC-Greensboro, the museum is known for its permanent collection, which includes lithographs and bronzes by Henri Matisse and more than 400 Japanese woodblock prints. There's an outdoor sculpture garden, and ever-changing exhibitions of 20th-century and modern American art.

This 404-acre city park on the banks of the Eno River boasts a restored mill dating from 1778—one of 32 that once dotted the area. Also on-site are a 19th-century Greek revival farmhouse that was occupied by John Cabe McCown, the onetime owner of the mill, and a museum that showcases early-20th-century photographer Hugh Mangum's pictures of the surrounding area. The Festival for the Eno, held around July 4, includes musicians, artists, and craftspeople from around the region.

In the 1920s, this building shaped like an 18th-century chest of drawers was constructed to call attention to the city's standing as the "Furniture Capital of the World." The 36-foot-high building, complete with a 6-foot-long pair of socks dangling from one of its drawers, remains one of the strangest sights in North Carolina to this day. Nearby Furnitureland South has actually built a much larger chest of drawers as the facade to one of its showrooms, although it is not freestanding.