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Columbia was purpose-built as South Carolina's capital in 1786, laid out on a formal grid of unusually wide streets a full mile from the center of the state. On February 17, 1865, Union General William Sherman's army marched through and much of the city burned in a fire whose cause is still disputed, the end of a decade-long argument between Sherman and Confederate general Wade Hampton about who struck the first match. The rebuilt city, with its mix of antebellum survivors and Victorian reconstruction, carries that history in its street names and building plaques.

The University of South Carolina anchors the Five Points and Shandon neighborhoods with a campus that includes the 1801 Rutledge College, the oldest building in continuous educational use in the South.

The State House on Main Street, its copper dome topped with a bronze star rather than a traditional lantern, has six bronze stars embedded in its exterior walls marking where Union artillery shells struck during the Civil War bombardment. The Congaree River, which winds through the south side of the city, leads to Congaree National Park, the largest intact expanse of bottomland hardwood forest in the eastern United States, just 20 miles from downtown.