walking tour unc chapel hill

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Get to know Carolina through these experiences for prospective students.

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Come join us for a welcome session and campus tour! Talk with current students and experience life on campus.

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Enjoy a self-guided tour of campus.

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Coker Arboretum

Plan your visit.

Serene walking paths take you past wildflowers and trees in this 5-acre gem on the UNC campus. Rest on one of several open lawns, or take a seat on a shady bench. Coker Arboretum changes with the seasons: from spring blooms to summer greenery and fall color to winter trees, there’s always something to see.

Coker Arboretum is open dawn to dusk, 365 days a year.

Leashed pets are welcome (please pick up after them).

Directions & Parking

Coker Arboretum is located on the corner of Cameron Avenue and Raleigh Street in Chapel Hill. Click here for Google Maps directions . Metered parking is available nearby and around downtown Chapel Hill.

Coker Arboretum paths are mostly flat and either smooth grit or brick. They are wheelchair accessible.

Arbor Renovation in Progress

Support the arboretum, arboretum guide.

Take a tour of Coker Arboretum!

$9 ($8 NCBG Members) Led by an experienced guide, this tour provides a relaxed, informative introduction to this jewel in the heart of Chapel Hill. This walking tour will explore the 5-acres that make up the Arboretum, allowing time for observation and discussion. Each tour differs as the gardens change through the seasons.

Schedule Your Visit

Designed for prospective students, this two-hour experience includes a welcome session and student panel discussion followed by a campus tour with a Carolina student as your tour guide.  If a date is full, unfortunately, we're not able to offer a waitlist. We hope you'll find an available date that works for you instead.   

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

Visitors Guide

We invite you to explore the heart of campus and feel the history, vibrancy and charm of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Free Walking Tours of Chapel Hill

A 1-1/2 hour tour to show you this charming University town. We start at the expansive Morehead Planetarium and Sun Dial, travel down the main street seeing the town's oldest buildings, site of 1960's protests, several of the outdoor murals for which the town is famous. We will delve into the history of UNC (the oldest public university in America) as we travel along one of the college's main roads. It's a lovely, easy, barrier-free tour. Start: We begin at the sun dial in front of the Morehead Planetarium on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill

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Walking through women’s history at Carolina

An undergraduate history class created a walking tour of Carolina’s campus that highlights the range of women’s experiences at the University.

The summer of 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which prohibits any state from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.

To celebrate the groundbreaking advancement, University Libraries began developing an exhibit to honor women’s history at Carolina, and associate professor Katherine Turk charged her “Women in the History of UNC-Chapel Hill” students with developing a virtual walking tour to accompany the library’s exhibit. While the library exhibit scheduled to open in spring 2020 was ultimately canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the walking tour became a pandemic-proof way for people to learn about women’s history at the nation’s first public university.

The tour explores women’s experiences on campus as they were shaped by race, class, age and sexuality. It can be taken in person or through navigating a digital map. Included in the map are the archival materials the students used to mark each place on the tour.

“We partnered with the library staff — especially Sarah Carrier, Rachel Reynolds, and graduate students Lara Lookabaugh and Aramis Sanchez, Jr. — to give students the opportunity to comb through a curated set of primary sources and construct a narrative based on the sources that they chose to highlight,” said Turk.

The students listened to interviews from the Southern Oral History Program and sifted through preserved University publications and documents from former students to develop 10 themes for the exhibit. Those themes mirrored the 10 points for a guided campus walking tour, including the Food Service Workers’ Strike, the Female Liberation Movement and the University Women’s Club. The history department’s Digital History Lab then helped digitize those materials and build the online map and tour for the class.

“I didn’t know a lot about women’s history at Carolina, so that definitely drew me to the class, on top of the really unique format that the class offered,” said Emily Orland, a junior journalism and history major who took the class in the spring of 2020. “There’s not many classes where you’re going to be making a museum exhibit and doing something so tangible and shareable with your research.”

Special collections exhibitions coordinator Rachel Reynolds works with Emily Orland (center) and her classmate Brynn Garner(right) at Wilson Library on Jan. 16, 2020. (Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Among the materials the students studied were a list of demands that a Carolina feminist group, Female Liberation #27, delivered to the administration at South Building in 1970 in an effort to improve the status and treatment of women affiliated with the University, and a letter from 1923 signed by Carolina alumna formally requesting the construction of a building for women’s housing on campus.

“My group focused on campus spaces relevant to women and the social lives of women at Carolina. We chose places on the tour that corresponded to different items from the archive that we thought were relevant to the history of women’s spaces and social lives at Carolina and wrote captions for the materials and descriptions of the locations,” said Marlee Walls, a senior studying computer science and math.

The students also learned through their research that the path from women being admitted to Carolina in 1897 to the present day isn’t a clear-cut timeline. It’s been a journey.

“It’s been a long, contested and uneven process to include women of all different backgrounds at Carolina. It might seem kind of paradoxical that women now outnumber men considering the challenges that remain,” said Turk. “The students wanted to capture the sense of progress and pride and forward momentum, but they also wanted to highlight the range of experiences women have on this campus have had and continued to have.”

She hopes that future students add to the existing project to continue sharing the experiences of women at Carolina.

“We hope that the walking tour can live on in perpetuity and that people continue to experience this campus through the eyes of women who walked these corridors and these quads in different eras,” said Turk. “This is just a starting point because the history of women at Carolina is an incredibly rich and complicated story, and there’s plenty more work to do.”

Turk believes it’s powerful for students to imagine themselves in the past while sitting on campus and looking through the papers of people who could have sat in that exact same chair decades ago.

“I think it’s pretty cool that the first survey I ever got of Carolina’s history was through the lens of women’s history,” said Walls. “It sounds cheesy, but all the women who came before me made it possible for me to study and participate in whatever I want at the University.”

Explore the women’s history tour virtually or use it as a guide while walking across campus

The recipients include two housekeepers, two administrators, two academic staff members and one executive assistant.

Nursing alumnus trains with NASA

Over eight days at sea, Joey Biddix worked with astronauts and Navy specialists to prepare for a water recovery mission.

Nature is good for kids

A new study from FPG researchers suggests preschoolers living near green space have better mental health.

CHASE Solar Hub pioneers liquid fuel conversion

At the center's Chapel Hill headquarters, more than 100 researchers work to turn sunlight into methanol.

Trash Force picks up after campus

What started as an extra credit opportunity grew into a club who has fun keeping Carolina clean.

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Your Tour leader: Sally

About our tour.

A tour of the beautiful town of Chapel Hill, NC - learn about the history of the town and its relationship to the oldest state university in the USA. See the distinctive murals that decorate this slice of heaven. Get tips on where to dine, and hints on some of the hidden gems. Your guide is a native of Chapel Hill, and has lived here most of her life.

See our tour schedule

What a lovely way to spend 90 minutes. Sally is so friendly and knowlegeable. I would recommend this tour to everyone! - Jennifer

I especially enjoyed Sally's coverage of the history of Chapel Hill, including the civil rights movement. Showing us Michael Brown's Murals was a nice addition - Johnny

Free Walking Tours Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

Chapel Hill Garden Tour

With the theme "Tucked Away Treasures," the biennial garden tour showcases five beautiful private gardens and the public North Carolina Botanical Garden (NCBG) in their spring splendor. The gardens, ranging from forested to shady to sunny, have been created by visionary gardeners with delightful points of view.

Dates & Times

April 27-28, 2024 Saturday 10 am – 4 pm; Sunday 11 am – 4 pm

100 Old Mason Farm Road Chapel Hill, NC 27517

Online advanced: $30; day of tour $40. Youth 16 & under free with a ticketed adult.

chapelhillgardenclub.net

Ends: 6/15/2024

2024 Outdoor NC Pledge Sweepstakes

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This is a repeating event april 28, 2024 2:00 pm

Chapel Hill Historic Churches Tour

21 apr 2:00 pm 3:00 pm Chapel Hill Historic Churches Tour

Event Details

Chapel Hill features many of the most visually stunning and historically compelling churches in America. From towering picturesque Gothic to the neat symmetry of the Neoclassical to the sublime Romanesque,

Chapel Hill features many of the most visually stunning and historically compelling churches in America. From towering picturesque Gothic to the neat symmetry of the Neoclassical to the sublime Romanesque, churches in Chapel Hill come in every style, from many denominations, and every era. Join Triangle Walking Tours on this guided excursions between the town’s many historic churches.

(Sunday) 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm (GMT-04:00)

Rougarou (formerly Imbibe)

108 Henderson St

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Hillsborough's Dickerson Chapel AME Church part of efforts to preserve history

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Efforts continue in Hillsborough to preserve a historic church.

Dickerson Chapel AME Church was originally constructed in 1790 as a courthouse for Orange County where enslaved Africans were sold.

The building later served many purposes including being the site of abolitionist meetings, and eventually became Dickerson Chapel in 1866.

"The original timber frame- portions are still visible in the basement. And later in the church's history donations allowed the installation of stained glass windows. Some of which bear the names of founding families of the church," Kaitlin McKeown with News and Observer said.

WATCH: ABC11 speaks with News and Observer on Hillsborough church preservation

Shaw University is helping to document the church's history and preservation.

Dickerson Chapel is one of 10 sites on Hillsborough 's walking tour project.

Related Topics

• HILLSBOROUGH
• BLACK HISTORY

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Fletcher on healing, her new album and being back on tour

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TWO THINGS CAN BE TRUE" )

FLETCHER: (Singing) Did we take it too far? Maybe.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Last spring Carrie Fletcher realized something was wrong - like, more than just the stress of a worldwide concert tour, a deep fatigue that caused long-term concern for her singing voice as well.

FLETCHER: When I had to take the tour down and I saw, you know, applauses get quiet and social media get quiet and then all of the things, you're really forced to, like, look at yourself in the mirror and really decide and see what, you know, your worth is outside of all of those things. Like, there was a lot of silence.

SUMMERS: Turns out it was Lyme disease, and so Carrie, who goes by Fletcher onstage, found herself facing a major physical recovery and a lot of unprocessed mental health to work through. She went back to her hometown in New Jersey, and with all that downtime, she started writing a new album to be called "In Search Of The Antidote."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ANTIDOTE")

FLETCHER: (Singing) I get high. I get high. I get low. I get low. You're my dopamine state. You're my sanity dose. I get high.

SUMMERS: A year later, Fletcher is out on the road again, singing this new album to her loyal fans. We caught her earlier this week on a day off in Germany, and she was stoked about being back.

FLETCHER: To return back to a sold-out tour with all of these beautiful fans and, you know, like, scream-singing these songs back to me that - some of which I wrote from such a place of desperation but also a place of, like, hope and happiness and love and excitement for the future and - I pinch myself all the time when I get to a new country that I've never even been to before and they're singing word for word with me. It's like - it's insane that this is my job.

SUMMERS: Is there a favorite moment that you could share from the tour that you're on now that really just drives it home for you?

FLETCHER: People have been bringing crazy signs to the show. I have a song called "Becky's So Hot," and there's a point where I'm, like, grinding on a mic stand. And so the fans started doing this thing where they're like, can I be the human mic stand?

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BECKY'S SO HOT")

FLETCHER: (Singing) Are you in love like we were? If I were you, I'd probably keep her - makes me want to hit her when I see her 'cause Becky's so hot in your vintage T-shirt.

There was a sign yesterday that said, truth or dare. And I saw it, and I picked dare. And then she folded the card over again, and it was like, I dare you to let me be your mic stand tonight. Somebody came to a concert dressed up as a microphone to the concert, and I was like, the commitment is real.

SUMMERS: I mean, this album - it's got rage and joy and lust and mess, which is something that you have certainly never shied away from mining, like in the lead single, "Eras Of Us," which I have heard is about running into your ex at Taylor Swift's Eras tour - true story?

FLETCHER: Yes. Truth or dare - that is the truth.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ERAS OF US")

FLETCHER: (Singing) It's nice to meet you.

Yeah. I had not seen my ex since the day that we had broken up, and we bumped into each other at the Taylor Swift concert. You know, to be at this show where both of us were, like, screaming these songs to an artist that has narrated so many of my breakups, so many of my romances - I just got hit with, you know, a wave of emotion of all of the eras of us, of her and I.

FLETCHER: (Singing) A story of love, stealing the air right from my lungs. Girl of my dreams, forever we're young. Remember it just the way it was, the eras of us.

And I think that's something I always really try to do with my music - is just to drop people into a really specific scene, into a really specific moment. And it's one of my favorite songs I've ever written. It just feels like a story.

SUMMERS: I wonder if you can tell us the story behind one of the songs on the album, "Doing Better," because that song's gotten stuck in my head - this idea of what better really is, why better feels worse.

FLETCHER: Yeah. Wow. I actually have a song on my last album - I have a song called "Better Version," and the lyric ends with, and now some other person's going to get the better version...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "BETTER VERSION")

FLETCHER: (Singing) Of me.

...Of me. Just in the last couple months, I was reflecting on, OK, well, what is the better version of me doing? And is she actually doing better? And I wrote a song called "Doing Better" that just really reflects on all the ways of, like, so many of the ways that my career had taken off...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DOING BETTER")

FLETCHER: (Singing) I'm doing better. I don't know if you remember when I told you in September that you wouldn't recognize me.

...Getting to do all these, like, incredible, incredible things and perform in all these places. And I felt awful.

FLETCHER: (Singing) I felt like I was flying. I felt the stars aligning. I always thought that if I ever got this high, I'd like it. I'm doing better. I've been looking for my center, but my tummy still hurts. Why does better feel worse?

We're kind of sold this narrative of, like, you know, we should have this amount of success by this amount of age and this type of relationship and this degree and this job. And this idea, this dream of better, you know, that we all have - it doesn't feel good. And it's actually, like, the deeper stuff, the stuff that, like, we don't put on display is, like, where so much of the antidote really is.

(SOUNDBITE OF FLETCHER SONG, "GIRL OF MY DREAMS")

SUMMERS: I don't want to get too messy here on public radio, but I do have to ask you about the ladies. I mean, your songs - people call them queer love anthems and queer anthems. And I'm curious how much you think about where your music fits within the sphere of queer pop music. Is that something that's, like, front of mind for you at all?

FLETCHER: When I first started writing, I was, like, really just embarking on my journey with my sexuality and just, you know, when I started talking about all of it for the first time and just falling in love with a girl for the first time. And I never really set out with a specific mission of, like, oh, I need the music to be categorized as this. It was just like, I just need to be free.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIRL OF MY DREAMS")

FLETCHER: (Singing) I'm on heartbreak No. 4. Tequila doesn't hit no more. I got a new rebound. I'm falling for me now.

When I think about where my music fits in terms of, you know, the scope of music, it's just - it's meant to go to whoever needs to find it. And my queer journey has been so embraced by the community, and I couldn't ask for anything more. But it's also just - you know, it's also so deeply universal, like, this idea of, like, belonging and...

SUMMERS: Right.

FLETCHER: ...Experiencing love for the first time.

SUMMERS: I mean, that's one of the things that strikes me, right? Whether you are dating a woman or married to a man, there's something really beautiful and universal with the way that you describe these intense and heartfelt and, at times, overwhelming feelings when it comes to love and lust and relationships and all of the spectrum in between there. It's something that works for everybody.

FLETCHER: Oh, I love that. Thank you. Yeah. It's - for me, it's always just - I've never wanted to - anyone to feel, like, alienated from the music, from the emotions, from the feelings. Like, I felt alienated for so long as a kid, you know? I just felt so in my own world and lonely and so sad. And to just - to find that sense of home, like, in myself and in my own music...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRETENDING")

FLETCHER: (Singing) I say goodnight as if my heart isn't wrenching.

And that's really what it is for me. It's just, like, the feelings are universal. We all navigate it. We all go through it, no matter how you identify, like, orientation-wise, gender, you know, sexuality. It's - we're human.

SUMMERS: Carrie Fletcher, thank you so much.

FLETCHER: Thank you so much. I appreciate you. This was a really sweet conversation.

SUMMERS: Fletcher's newest album, "In Search Of The Antidote," is out now.

FLETCHER: (Singing) We'll keep on pretending. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.