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The University of Texas Longhorns have a decades old
rivalry with the Texas A&M Aggies, each fighting to be known as
Texas' number one college, both academically and in terms of physical
prowess. The UT athletics department is comprised of several award
wining teams including the Longhorns men's football
team, baseball
team, and basketball
team, as well as the womens basketball,
soccer,
and tennis
teams.
Austin is also home to a wide assortment
dining experiences, recreational family activities,
educational/historical venue's, and more.
Texas
State Capitol Complex in Austin
Smack in the middle of downtown Austin, the Capitol Complex is made up of over two dozen state government offices. Like a pink mirage in the city centre's sea of green, the Texas State Capitol (1888) is certainly Austin's most distinctive landmark. Constructed of sunset-coloured Texas limestone, the capitol is topped with a statue of the
Goddess of Liberty and ranks as the seventh largest government building in the world.
The capitol's rotunda features terrazzo seals of the six nations whose flag has flown over Texas. Inside the building you'll find the standard assortment of the state's top brass, including the chambers of the Senate and House of Representatives and the offices of the governor.
University of Texas Museums & Galleries
The LBJ Library on the University of Texas (UT) campus is a highlight of a visit to Austin. Lyndon Baines Johnson - or LBJ, as he was known to just about everybody - was the 36th president of the USA. A menacingly jovial native Texan, LBJ balanced the John F Kennedy campaign ticket with a southern political mainstay and, hours after JFK's assassination, was sworn in as president on board Air Force One. Supported by Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, the museum contains as much propaganda as you'd expect but also offers a candid look at the social and political climate of the era. Look for video clips of head-bashin' cops and dope-smokin' hippies to complement solid exhibitions on the JFK presidency and assassination, the Bay of Pigs, Krushchev, the civil rights movement, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. Upstairs, a new exhibit on Mexican Texans details pre-republic Texas life.
Also on campus, the Texas Memorial Museum packs a huge art deco building with displays of Texas' natural and social history. Exhibits focus on geology, paleontology, anthropology and natural history. Don't miss the impressive pterodactyl skeleton.
The Archer M Huntington Gallery (Now the Jack S. Blanton Museum of
Art) at UT is one art museum in two buildings: the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) on the West Campus and the Art Building on the East. The collection focuses on 20th century North American and Latin American art and on drawings from the 15th century on. Major figures represented include Elsworth Kelly, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchel, Thomas Hart Benton and Robert Henri. On the first floor of the HRC is the museum's prized Gutenberg bible.
The university is located just north of the capitol complex and is easily accessed by bus No 86/Congress 'Dillo.
As well as being the capital of Texas,
Austin is also famous for being the independent music capital of the
world, featuring live bands from all over the state attempting to make a
name for themselves in the music scene.
East 6th Street -
Austin Live Music and
Entertainment District
Along with Congress Ave, this central historical thoroughfare has been the focus of Austin's downtown area for more than 100 years. When the Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888, Congress Ave stole the spotlight from East 6th St which declined into a virtual skid row by the 1960s.
In the late '60s, local entrepreneurs took to restoring the area's aged Victorian and Renaissance Revival structures, and by the mid '70s, East 6th was jumping again as the city's main live-music and entertainment district. Since then, the party's just kept getting bigger, the lights brighter and the string of clubs and bars between Congress and Sabine - in the area known as the Strip - have been the main propellant in Austin's current rise to 'hipster' fame. On weekends, the Strip is cordoned off for pedestrian traffic only and the revelers take to the streets in droves. If you want to experience the Austin you've read about in Rolling Stone, this is the place to go.
