SOMETIMES, WALKING THE STREETS of Columbus, Ohio, it’s easy to think you’re in Old Europe. In the Victorian Village district, 100-year-old Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne mansions, with their steep roofs and colorful towers, stand alongside newly refinished Gothic Revivals, distinguished by high-pitched gable roofs and pointed arch windows. If you duck into one of the neighborhood cafés, you might hear conversation in three or four languages, thanks to nearby Ohio State University and a local enthusiasm for diversity.

A five-minute drive to the south, in historic German Village, you can walk the tree-lined brick paths from the Meeting Haus Platz (which houses the annual GartenMarkt on May 10) to the Village Valuables & Bratwurst Bistro, the city’s largest open market. Here businesses and residents fill their yards, porches and sidewalks with trinkets homemade and imported, and children sell lemonade in paper cups.

It’s another five-minute drive to the Short North Arts District. Except for the absence of bustle and traffic, you might feel as if you’re in Manhattan as you browse the hip upscale gallery and dining scene. Five minutes more and you could be sitting down at a restaurant table in Confluence Park, where the Scioto and Olentangy rivers meet in a setting that suggests (albeit in miniature) the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle in Germany. For nightlife, it’s just another five minutes to the Arena District, a new urbanist development and the city’s latest hotspot. Here you can enjoy great food, take in a movie and watch an Arena Football or NHL hockey game at Nationwide Arena—all on the same night.

ART HIGH AND LOW
The downtown Columbus Museum of Art (480 E. Broad St.; 614-221-6801) has long been considered world-class. Indeed, Gertrude Stein remembered it fondly in her 1937 Everybody’s Autobiography: “It was all Cubist and good Picassos and Juan Gris and others but really good ones. There had never been anything like that either in choice or quality or like that in any other museum.”

The collection now includes major works by Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Hopper and O’Keeffe, as well as a wide variety of Impressionists and German Expressionists. The museum also has the largest public collection of wood carvings by Columbus folk artist Elijah Pierce, whose America was populated with cowboys and hoboes, cartoon icons like Popeye, and sports heroes such as home-run king Hank Aaron. Worth noting, too, is the world’s largest repository of works by Columbus native George Bellows, widely regarded as the finest American artist at the dawn of the 20th century.

On the city’s north side, the Wexner Center for the Arts (1871 N. High St.; 614-292-3535) specializes in cutting-edge contemporary American and international art, including installations, films and a performing arts series. Upcoming summer-long exhibitions include abstract painter Mary Heilmann’s career retrospective “To Be Someone,” which weds traditional crafts with postmodern canvas work, and graphic novelist Jeff Smith’s “Bone and Beyond,” displaying Smith’s original comic-book art alongside the work of master artists Charles Schulz, Garry Trudeau and Will Eisner.

THE NATURAL WORLD
Just east of downtown, the Franklin Park Conservatory (1777 E. Broad St.; 614-645-8733) is the Midwest’s premier botanical garden. Its many greenhouses replicate environments like the cool Himalayas, a Pacific island water garden, a tropical rain forest and an arid desert. In addition to the bonsai, orchid and palm collections, visitors can enjoy more than 100 species of butterflies and a collection of Dale Chihuly’s blown-glass sculptures.

To the northwest, the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium (9990 Riverside Dr.; 614-645-3550), best known for its association with director emeritus Jack Hanna, is home to some 6,000 animals representing more than 700 species. For those who like their nature more, well, natural, the 4,705-acre Hoover Reservoir Area (7701 Sunbury Rd.; 614-645-3350) offers opportunities for kayaking, birding (both shore birds and waterfowl) and fishing, from sunup to sundown.

Golf lovers should explore the 24,000-square-foot Jack Nicklaus Museum (2355 Olentangy River Rd.; 614-247-5959), with its hall of fame–style exhibits, golf theater and pro shop. Nicklaus himself has been known to make unannounced visits.

PAST AND PRESENT
Downtown, on the Battelle Riverfront, the city honors its namesake, Christopher Columbus, by way of a 98-foot working replica of the Santa Maria that brought him and his crew to the New World in 1492. The Santa Maria Seeds of Change Visitor Education Center (25 Marconi Blvd.; 614-645-0351) also celebrates human ingenuity with its Invisibility Exhibit, which demonstrates the scientific theory that objects can be rendered invisible by the bending of light. Stepping from the main deck and into the Invisibility Exhibit, the visitor feels pleasingly suspended between two continents separated by 500 years.

END OF THE DAY
The Arena District is the perfect place to wind down, whether your idea of a peaceful evening is a late movie at the luxurious Arena Grand Movie Theater (614-470-9900), a concert, a hockey or football game at Nationwide Arena (614-246-2000) or a quiet stroll beneath the Union Station Arch in romantic McFerson Commons Park, where the city’s 19th century train depot used to be. Consider, too, the pleasures of ice skating at the Dispatch Ice Haus (614-246-3380), where you can take a leisurely glide around the indoor skating rink—with one glass wall, so you can see outside.

Afterward, have a beer or even a late-night pizza at the upscale Frog Bear & Wild Boar (343 N. Front St.; 614-621-9453). Or turn in early enough to enjoy tomorrow’s 6 a.m. breakfast call at the Rise & Dine (277 W. Nationwide Blvd.; 614-222-3008). Then watch the sun rise over downtown in the city where Old World meets the new.

For more information, visit experiencecolumbus.com 

STAY

Harrison House B&B
313 W. 5th Ave.; 800-827-4203; bbonline.com/oh/harrison; doubles from $129

The Lofts 55 E. Nationwide Blvd.; 614-
461-2663; 55lofts.com; doubles from $189

Westin Columbus 310 S. High St.;
800-937-8461; westin.com/columbus;
doubles from $139

EAT

Schmidt’s Restaurant & Sausage Haus
240 E. Kossuth St.; 614-444-6808; lunch
for two, $30*

Alana’s Food & Wine 2333 N. High St.;
614-294-6783; dinner for two, $80

Haiku: Poetic Food and Art 800 N. High
St.; 614-294-8168; lunch for two, $35

*Prices cover a meal for two, not including drinks, tax or tip. 

FAIRS & FESTIVALS

Juneteenth Ohio Festival
June 13–15. A multicultural celebration in Franklin Park, commemorating the abolition of slavery. 1777 E. Broad St.;614-258-4633; juneteenthohio.net; admission free

ComFest
June 27-29. A three-day community and music festival with events for all ages. Goodale Park; 120 W. Goodale Blvd.; comfest.com; admission free

Red, White and Boom
July 3. The largest fireworks display in the Midwest, launched from the banks of the Scioto River. Admission free

Ohio State Fair
July 30-Aug. 10. Agricultural exhibits and a Midway, with more than 800,000 in attendance. Ohio Expo Center; 717 E. 17th Ave.; 888-OHO-EXPO; adults $10