A Depression-era WPA project grew into Florida's big-event workhorse. Camping World Stadium at 1 Citrus Bowl Place in Orlando's West Lakes neighbourhood began in 1936 as Orlando Stadium, built by the Works Progress Administration for 115,000 dollars with seating for 8,900 beside the old Tinker Field ballpark. The inaugural Tangerine Bowl on New Year's Day 1947 - Catawba beating Maryville 31-6 - started the bowl-game tradition that named the stadium for decades, and successive expansions in 1952,.....

A 1923 storefront that spent decades as downtown Orlando's nightclub chameleon found its most polished form as Celine. The three-story venue at 22 South Magnolia Avenue sits in the heart of the Downtown Orlando Historic District - the building appears in the National Register paperwork as the old Dixie Theater address - and cycled through club identities including Lyrica and Vain before the team behind the acclaimed Mather's Social Gathering craft-cocktail lounge next door took it over and relau.....

Orlando's oldest continuously running institution is not a theme park - it is the fairgrounds on West Colonial Drive. The Central Florida Fairgrounds at 4603 West Colonial Drive occupy 87 lakefront acres about four miles west of downtown, home of the Central Florida Fair, founded in 1912 by community leaders celebrating the region's agricultural economy - decades before the first mouse ear appeared in Orange County. The fair remains the largest not-for-profit fair in Central Florida and among th.....

A million-pound orchestral shell glides along tracks, reshaping an entire hall from proscenium theater to concert room in minutes - the engineering showpiece of a 613-million-dollar bet on downtown Orlando. The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts at 445 South Magnolia Avenue, across from City Hall, opened on 6 November 2014 after two decades of planning, a two-block campus designed by Barton Myers with HKS that has drawn millions of guests to thousands of performances. The Walt Disney T.....

A purpose-built soccer stadium in downtown Orlando, Inter and Co Stadium is the home of the city's Major League Soccer club and its professional women's team. Opened in 2017 and known previously under other corporate names, the ground was designed specifically for football, with steep stands that bring supporters close to the pitch and create one of the most intense atmospheres in American soccer. The stadium holds around twenty-five thousand spectators, with a continuous bowl and a safe-standi.....

A gleaming, glass-walled landmark in the downtown core, the Kia Center is the principal indoor arena of Orlando and the home of the city's professional basketball team. Opened in 2010 as the Amway Center and renamed following a later sponsorship deal, it was the centrepiece of an ambitious civic plan to revitalise the city centre, and its modern design earned high marks for both technology and sustainability. Spanning some 875,000 square feet across eight levels, the arena seats roughly 18,800 .....

At the green heart of downtown Orlando, Lake Eola Park wraps a busy urban core around a tranquil lake, offering residents and visitors a beloved retreat just minutes from the office towers. The lake itself is in fact a sinkhole, fed by springs, and the surrounding park has served as the city's informal gathering place for well over a century, its skyline-framed setting making it one of the most recognisable images of Orlando. The park's centrepiece is a large illuminated fountain set in the mid.....

The lawn slopes down toward a stage with Lake Lawne behind it, and on festival days 10,000 people fill the grass. The Orlando Amphitheater at the Central Florida Fairgrounds, 4603 West Colonial Drive, opened in 2016 and quickly became the city's workhorse outdoor concert venue. The setting is the point: the fairgrounds' lakeside acreage west of downtown gave Orlando something it lacked - an open-air, general-admission bowl holding 10,000 standing or around 7,000 with lawn chairs, built without .....

Thirty-two abstract canvases by painter Tom McGrath cover the ceiling, and the floor itself moves. The Alexis and Jim Pugh Theater is the intimate 294-seat house within the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts at 445 South Magnolia Avenue in downtown Orlando, across from City Hall. The room is engineered for shape-shifting: the main floor sits on a manual scissor-lift riser system that reconfigures between standard tiered seating, cabaret tiers with tables, and a flat floor at stage leve.....

The hall floats on 400 rubber pads so that nothing - not traffic, not thunder, not Florida itself - reaches the music. Steinmetz Hall at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 South Magnolia Avenue in downtown Orlando, opened on 14 January 2022 as the final piece of the 613-million-dollar center - and immediately entered the conversation for the most acoustically perfect room in the world. The specification is the story: an N1 background sound rating, the lowest level detectable b.....