Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park.

Sweet Auburn was the commercial and civic centre of Black Atlanta for the first half of the twentieth century, and this park is four blocks of it kept as it was. The point is not that the buildings are old. The point is that they are close together — a house, a church, a street — and that walking between them in twenty minutes tells you something a museum cannot.

What to see, in this order

The birth home is the bit that sells out

The house at 501 Auburn Avenue can only be seen on a ranger-led tour, the groups are small because the rooms are small, and tickets are released on the day at the visitor centre rather than online. In practice that means being at the desk within the first half hour of opening, particularly between March and July and on any long weekend. If you turn up at two in the afternoon expecting to walk in, you will not.

It is worth the organising. The tour is thirty minutes in the rooms of an ordinary middle-class house — the piano his mother taught on, the kitchen table, the upstairs bedroom — and the rangers who run it are the best interpreters in the city. If you cannot get on one, the exterior and the block are still open and the visitor centre film covers a good deal of the same ground.

Ebenezer, and the two buildings people confuse

There are two Ebenezer Baptist buildings on the block and both matter. The Heritage Sanctuary is the original church, restored to how it looked in the 1960s, where King was co-pastor with his father and where his funeral was held; a recording of his voice plays in the room, which is as close to the thing itself as the park gets. Across the street, the new Horizon Sanctuary is the working congregation — a living church, not an exhibit.

If you are here on a Sunday, the service at the Horizon Sanctuary is open to visitors and that is a completely different experience of the same place: a congregation going about its week, not a heritage site. Dress as you would for church, sit where you are shown, and do not photograph the service. It is the one part of this page that is not a visit.

The crypt, the pool and the rest of Auburn

Between the two churches is the King Center, with the reflecting pool and the crypt where Martin and Coretta Scott King are buried, and the eternal flame beside it. It is a short, quiet stop and people treat it as one. The Center’s own galleries hold his Nobel medal and personal effects and are worth twenty minutes; they are run separately from the National Park Service site, which is why the opening hours occasionally differ.

Then keep walking east. Auburn Avenue carries the Royal Peacock, the old Atlanta Daily World building and the Sweet Auburn Curb Market a few blocks west, and the street itself is the exhibit — a commercial district that was thriving before the interstate was driven through it in the 1950s and has never fully recovered. The park explains the street; the street explains the park.

Getting there, and what it costs

King Memorial station on the Blue and Green lines is a seven-minute walk south of the visitor centre, and that is how we would come: one standard fare from Five Points, no parking to think about. From Midtown it is a train and a walk, about twenty-five minutes door to door. From the Eastside BeltLine it is a mile from the Krog Street end, which is a pleasant walk in October and a hot one in July.

Entry to the National Park Service sites — the visitor centre, the Heritage Sanctuary, the fire station, the birth home tour — is free. The King Center galleries and the occasional special programme are separately run. There is a small park car park that fills by mid-morning and metered street parking that does not, and if you are driving, that is the argument for arriving at opening.

To sleep next to it, Sweet Auburn itself is the obvious base and is quieter after dark than visitors expect; Downtown is a fifteen-minute walk and has far more rooms. Both are on the list of bases with rail at the door.