A city of neighborhoods, Asheville rewards careful exploration, especially on foot. You can break up your sightseeing with stops at the more than 100 restaurants and bars in downtown alone, and at scores of unique shops (only a couple of downtown Asheville stores are national chains).
Asheville has the largest extant collection of art deco buildings in the Southeast outside Miami Beach, most notably the S&W Cafeteria (completed 1929), Asheville City Hall (1928), First Baptist Church (1927), and Asheville High School (1929). It's also known for its architecture in other styles: Battery Park Hotel (1924) is neo-Georgian; the Flatiron Building (1924) is neoclassical; the Basilica of St. Lawrence (1909) is Spanish baroque; the 15-story Jackson Building (1924), Asheville's first skyscraper, is neo-Gothic; and the old Pack Library (1926), now part of the Asheville Art Museum, is in the Italian Renaissance style.
