No trip to Asheville would be complete without paying a visit to the different museums, art galleries and memorial sites in almost every corner of the city and its surroundings as part of its multifaceted attractions.

Asheville has a large number of Art Galleries, including the American Folk Art and Antiques, Appalachian Craft Center, Bellagio Gallery, Blue Gallery, Grovewood Gallery, and the New Morning Gallery just to name a few ones.

• The Asheville Art Museum
Accredited by the American Association of Museums and founded in 1948, the Asheville Art Museum offers exhibits throughout the year. This is the single visual arts facility serving Western North Carolina, including a large collection and programs available to the diverse communities in the region, committed to being a vital force in community and individual development.

The museum offers also a wide and exciting variety of programs and facilities for all ages to enjoy, including workshop lectures and lifelong opportunities for education and enrichment through visual arts. Children can enjoy programs such as the all-day Children's Holiday Camp.

• Colburn Gem and Mineral Museum
This museum is the legacy of engineer and bank president Burnham Standish Colburn whom retired in Asheville. In 1927, he formed the Southern Appalachian Mineral Society in this city because of its proximity to North Carolina's mineral fields containing the greatest variety of minerals in the nation.

The museum is located in downtown Asheville and houses specimens of minerals collected in the region during the 1920s, as well as an exhibition including minerals from all around the world, and one of the most impressive collections of gems, fluorescent minerals, fossils, petrology and crystals.

• Farm Village at Biltmore Estate
Located on the Biltmore Estate, this museum offers a glimpse into the lives, work and play of estate workers in the 1890s.

Farm Village features interpretive exhibits with antique equipment, farmyard animals and a colorful kitchen garden. They say the past comes alive at the Historic Horse Barn, and this is closely true.

• Smith-McDowell House Museum
Asheville's first mansion built in 1840 is today a beautiful museum open to the public and maintained by the Western North Carolina Historical Association, featuring different programs, events and exhibits. The house is also available for birthdays and weddings rentals.

Smith-McDowell was one of the leading businessmen in North Carolina, who owned a store, the Buck Hotel, a tavern, two plantations, a tannery, and a gold mine before build this mansion with brick, which was rare in the region at the time.

Upon his death in 1856, the subsequent owners made additions to the house, until 1951, when the Catholic Diocese purchased it for a boy's school dormitory.

In 1974, the house and grounds was purchased by the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, the same year in which the Western North Carolina Historical Association rescued the house from demolition by negotiating a lease to restore the house as a heritage center.

• Folk Art Center
Near the Blue Ridge Parkway, this museum represents craft artists from Southern Appalachia, and home of the Southern Highland Craft Guild.

Folk Art Center offers daily craft demonstrations from April to December, featuring also a gallery, which showcases changing exhibits of regional and national scope.

• The Health Adventure
A nonprofit, health and related sciences education center founded in 1968 by the Buncombe County Medical Society Auxiliary as the Asheville's Family Health and Science Museum, featuring a hands-on, interactive approach to the different exhibitions.

This museum has gained national and international recognition because of its dedication for improving children and family’s health awareness, promoting wellness lifestyles, and increasing science literacy through programs and dynamic exhibits.

• Art International Asheville
Contemporary art from Austria, England, France, Greece, Switzerland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel Ukraine, Croatia, China, and many other countries, is exhibited at this museum, featuring original paintings and sculptures.

• Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center
A non-profit organization created downtown in 1993 to establish a permanent facility near the site of the college, featuring exhibitions displaying the college's remarkable past.

The Arts Center is a permanent exhibition space exploring the history and legacy of the world's most acclaimed experimental educational community, through changing exhibitions, research materials, and a video archive.

• Estes-Winn Auto Museum
Established in 1965 the museum displays a considerable number of classic and antique cars that includes a 1926 Cadillac, a 1927 La Salle, a Ford Model "T"s, a 1916 Willys Overland and many others.

Housed in a building erected in 1923 within the historic Biltmore Industries Weaving shop, the museum has a unique atmosphere, which surroundings provide the link between past and present. Most of the cars in this collection are original and still in running condition.

There are other automobile museums in Asheville, including the Wheels Through Time Museum in the Maggie Valley, and the Antique Car Museum adjacent to the Grove Park Inn Resort.