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Raleigh was purpose-built in 1792 to serve as North Carolina's capital, planned on a grid around five public squares, and for much of its first century it was a quiet government town that other North Carolinians called the City of Oaks for its canopy of large trees. The Research Triangle, formed with nearby Durham and Chapel Hill in the 1950s around three major universities, transformed it from a sleepy administrative centre into one of the fastest-growing metros in the United States, and the city is still mid-transformation.

Downtown Raleigh has changed dramatically in the last two decades.

The Fayetteville Street corridor, long dead after a failed pedestrian mall experiment, came back to life and now has restaurants, bars, and a farmers market that runs year-round. Glenwood South and the Warehouse District have independent coffee shops, design firms, and music venues where nothing existed twenty years ago. The city also has genuinely excellent free museums, including the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and the NC Museum of History, both downtown, which makes it a good walking city even if you run out of things to buy.