The city's Scioto Milla is a series of parks on either side of the Scioto River, with a huge interactive fountain and trails. On the West Bank, the COSI Science Center offers hands-on exhibits and a planetarium. Downtown, the Columbus Museum of Art includes American and European paintings and a sculpture garden. The German Village area has restored brick houses built by 19th century settlers.
The Scioto Milla began to develop along the riverbank, an area that already had the Miranova Corporate Center and The Condominiums at North Bank Park. The median age in the city was 31.2 years. The gender composition of the city was 48.8% male and 51.2% female. North Market, a public market and food hall, is located downtown, near Short North.
It is the only public market left from the four original Columbus markets. Columbus has many notable buildings, such as the Ohio State House, the Ohio Judicial Center and the Greater Columbus Convention Center, the Rhodes State Office Tower, the LeVeque Tower and One Nationwide Plaza. Established in 1848, Green Lawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in the Midwest of the United States. Biographical museums include the Thurber House (which documents the life of cartoonist James Thurber), the Jack Nicklaus Museum (which documents the golfer's career, located on the OSU campus) and the Kelton House Museum and Garden.
The historic Kelton House Museum commemorates three generations of the Kelton family, the use of the house as a documented station on the Underground Railroad, and Victorian life in general. Other notable museums in the city include the Central Ohio Fire Museum, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library's & Museum, and the Museum of Crafts. Columbus is home to many performing arts institutions, such as the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Opera, the BalletMet Columbus, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, CATCO, the Columbus Children's Theater, Shadowbox Live and the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. Throughout the summer, the Actors' Theater of Columbus offers free performances of Shakespeare plays in an open-air amphitheater in Schiller Park, in the historic German town.
The annual festivities in Columbus include the Ohio State Fair, one of the largest state fairs in the country, as well as the Columbus Arts Festival and the Jazz & Rib Fest, which take place on the downtown riverfront. In mid-May, Columbus is home to Rock on the Range, which is being touted as the biggest rock festival in the United States. The festival, which takes place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, has hosted Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slipknot and other notable bands. During the first weekend of June, the bars of Columbus's North Market District host the Park Street Festival, which attracts thousands of visitors to a massive party in bars and on the street.
The penultimate weekend in June is one of the largest gay pride parades in the Midwest, Columbus Pride, which reflects the city's sizeable gay population. On the last weekend of June, Goodale Park hosts ComFest (short for Community Festival), a massive three-day music festival that is being touted as the largest non-commercial festival in the U.S. UU. The Greek Festival is celebrated in August or September at the Greek Orthodox Church in the center.
The Hot Times festival, a celebration of music, art, food and diversity, is held annually in the Olde Towne East neighborhood. The June 19 Ohio Festival is celebrated every year in Franklin Park on Father's Day weekend. Started by Mustafaa Shabaz, Juneteenth Ohio is one of the largest African-American festivals in the United States, including three full days of music, food, dance and entertainment by local and national record artists. The festival celebrates Father's Day in honor of local fathers.
During Memorial Day weekend, the Asian Festival is celebrated. Hundreds of restaurants, vendors and companies open stalls, perform traditional music and martial arts, and organize cultural exhibitions. The Jazz & Rib Fest is a free downtown event held every July with jazz artists such as Randy Weston, D. Bohannon Clark and Wayne Shorter, along with rib vendors from across the country.
As the capital of Ohio and the county seat, Columbus is home to numerous government offices and federal, state, county and municipal courts. Franklin County operates the Franklin County Government Center, a complex at the southern end of downtown Columbus. The center includes the municipal county court, the common cause court, the correctional center, the juvenile detention center and the sheriff's office. Suburbs operate their own districts, usually serving students in one or more municipalities, and districts sometimes cross municipal boundaries.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus also operates several parochial elementary and secondary schools. The second largest school district in the area is South-Western City Schools, which encompasses southwestern Franklin County, which includes a portion of Columbus itself. Other parts of Columbus are zoned into the Dublin, New Albany-Plain, Westerville and Worthington school districts. Several weekly and daily newspapers serve Columbus and central Ohio.
Columbus' main daily newspaper is The Columbus Dispatch. There are also neighborhood- or suburban-specific newspapers, such as ThisWeek Community News by Dispatch Printing Company, Columbus Messenger, Clintonville Spotlight and Short North Gazette. The Lantern and 1870 serve the Ohio State University community. Alternative newspapers focusing on arts, culture or politics include ALIVE (formerly the independent magazine Columbus Alive and now owned by Columbus Dispatch), Columbus Free Press and Columbus Underground (in digital format only).
The Columbus Magazine, CityScene, 614 Magazine and Columbus Monthly are the city's magazines. However, the addressing system covers almost all of Franklin County, and only a few older suburbs retain egocentric address systems. The address scale of 700 per mile brings addresses closer to 10,000 at county borders, but they don't usually reach them. Rickenbacker International Airport, in southern Franklin County, is a major cargo facility used by the Ohio Air National Guard.
Allegiant Air provides nonstop service from Rickenbacker to Florida destinations. The Ohio State University's Don Scott Airport and Bolton Field are other large general aviation facilities in the Columbus area. Columbus's private institutions include Capital University School of Law, Columbus School of Art and Design, Fortis College, DeVry University, Ohio Business College, Miami-Jacobs Career College, the Ohio Health Career Institute, the Bradford School and Franklin University, as well as schools Sisters Bexley Episcopal Hall Seminary, Mount Carmel College of Nursing, Ohio Dominican University, Pontifical Josephinum College and Trinity Lutheran Seminary. Berkeley, California, replaced Hispanic Heritage Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992 to honor the original inhabitants of the islands where it landed.
After the war, Port Columbus Airport (now known as John Glenn Columbus International Airport) became the hub of a coordinated transcontinental rail-to-air system that moved passengers from the east coast to the west. Some people say Columbus discovered America or the New World, but Vikings like Leif Eriksson had visited North America centuries before, and Native American tribes had lived in the Americas for centuries before Columbus or the Vikings arrived. The city of Columbus was named after the 15th century Italian explorer Christopher Columbus when the city was founded in 1812. In 1850, the Columbus and Xenia Railroad became the first railroad to reach the city, followed by the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati railroads in 1851. Columbus also hosts many conventions at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, a large convention center on the north end of the center.
In 1964, Geraldine Fredritz Mock, a native of Ohio, became the first woman to fly solo around the world, leaving Columbus and piloting the Spirit of Columbus. The Quincentennial Jubilee of Christopher Columbus, which celebrates the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage, was celebrated in the city in 1992. To commemorate this relationship, Columbus received as a gift from the people of Genoa a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus. . .
