Atlanta · Murals · 3 min read
The BeltLine Is Basically Atlanta's Longest Art Gallery
22 miles of old rail corridor, reimagined as a walkable, bikeable outdoor museum.
September 7, 2026
Listen · about 2 min
The Atlanta BeltLine is famous for being the biggest urban redevelopment project the city has ever attempted — 22 miles of abandoned rail line slowly turning into connected trails looping through 45 neighborhoods. But mixed in with the joggers and dog-walkers is one of the largest temporary public art collections in the country.
A juried, rotating outdoor collection
Atlanta BeltLine Art — the organization's public art program — calls the corridor "one of the largest temporary public art exhibits and linear galleries in the United States," spanning sculpture, murals, and performance. The Eastside Trail, the first stretch finished, runs from the tip of Piedmont Park down through Old Fourth Ward, Poncey-Highland, Inman Park, and into Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown.
Some works have been there since the trail's early days. Artist Brandon Sadler first painted a tunnel passage on the Eastside Trail back in 2012, and returned nearly fifteen years later to repaint the entire tunnel — ceiling included — with a mythological scene inspired by Korean Buddhist temple paintings, called "As Above So Below".
A trail is just a hallway until someone paints the walls.
Not just murals on walls
The BeltLine's art program also opens annual calls for temporary installations and even permanent acquisitions — sculptures, light works, photography installs — meaning the corridor's look changes season to season, not just wall to wall. It also hosts recurring events like the ATL StyleWriters Jam, celebrating graffiti's stylistic lineage, and the lantern-lit night parade produced by the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons.
That mix — some murals decades-old, some installations gone in a season — is what makes walking (or biking) the Eastside Trail feel different every time. You might pass a mural in March that's a blank primer wall by June.
Make the walls move
On a Vivia Art piece, one tap of the shutter plays the artist's own animation right on the real wall. Your free Art Passport saves every piece you find.
