Memphis, explained
Access Memphis Editorial Team 
The Orpheum Theatre is a historic performing arts venue on Main Street in downtown Memphis, built in 1928 as a movie and vaudeville palace on the site of an earlier opera house. It now operates as a nonprofit performance hall hosting touring Broadway productions, opera, ballet and concerts, and it is a listed historic building. … Read more
Mason Temple is a large Church of God in Christ (COGIC) sanctuary in south Memphis that serves as the denomination’s world headquarters. It is the building where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. What … Read more
Clayborn Temple is a Romanesque Revival church building in downtown Memphis, near Beale Street, that served as the organizing headquarters for the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. It is where the “I AM A MAN” signs were produced and where marchers gathered before walking into the city, including the march led by Dr. Martin Luther … Read more
What is the Peabody Hotel? The Peabody Hotel is a historic hotel in downtown Memphis, at 149 Union Avenue, operating continuously (under different owners) since the 19th century in an earlier building and since 1925 in its current one. It is known locally and nationally as “The South’s Grand Hotel” and for a daily event … Read more
The Memphis Pyramid is a 321-foot stainless-steel pyramid on the Memphis riverfront, built in 1991 as a sports arena for the University of Memphis and, briefly, the Memphis Grizzlies. It sat empty for a decade after the teams moved out, and in 2015 the retailer Bass Pro Shops reopened it as a store, hotel and … Read more
Beale Street is a short commercial strip in downtown Memphis, roughly three blocks long, that grew into the city’s central Black business and music district from the late 1800s onward and is now run largely as an entertainment corridor of clubs, bars and music venues on land owned or controlled by the city of Memphis. … Read more
No Memphis museum is free every day of the week without exception, but several offer a recurring free window — a weekly hour block, a resident discount, or participation in a national program — and a small number are free at all times. The pattern differs by museum, and it changes without notice, so this … Read more
Chucalissa is an archaeological site in southwest Memphis: an earthen mound settlement built and occupied by Mississippian-period Native American communities, with later reoccupation, on a bluff above the Mississippi River floodplain. The C.H. Nash Museum is the University of Memphis facility that manages the site, holds its collections, and interprets it to the public. What … Read more
The Memphis Belle is a B-17F Flying Fortress bomber, one of the first US Army Air Forces heavy bombers to complete 25 combat missions over Europe and return home. It is not currently in Memphis. The restored aircraft is on permanent public display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson … Read more
The Withers Collection Museum and Gallery is a small photography museum on Beale Street built around the archive of Ernest C. Withers, a Memphis photojournalist who documented the civil rights movement, Negro Leagues baseball and the Beale Street music scene from the 1940s through the 1970s. It is also, since 2010, tied to a well-documented … Read more
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