Pet a stingray, fire a rocket you built yourself, or shape clay in a working studio — Chattanooga invites you to experience Chattanooga in a hand-ons way. These exhibits are designed for touch, play, and discovery. Most sit within a few downtown blocks, making them easy to reach on foot and perfect for a rainy afternoon or a hot summer day.

Explore Interactive Exhibits at the Tennessee Aquarium

The Tennessee Aquarium spans two riverfront buildings, both good for slow, close-up exploration. In River Journey, the Sturgeon Bend exhibit in the Ridges to Rivers gallery lets you feel the ridged, leathery skin of a living lake sturgeon.

Over in Ocean Journey, Stingray Bay is the aquarium's largest touch tank. Reach into the warm water to feel cownose rays and small sharks glide past your fingers. Between tanks, an escalator carries you through immersive habitats, from a butterfly garden to a coral reef.

Budget two to three hours for both buildings. The aquarium is open 10am to 6pm daily, with adult tickets around $40 and ages 5 to 17 around $30. For a rainy afternoon, add the IMAX 3D Theater next door at 201 Chestnut Street. Bundle it with your aquarium ticket for a discount on both!

Visit Creative Discovery Museum for Hands-On Learning

A few blocks from the aquarium, Creative Discovery Museum builds its exhibits around hands-on activities: building, creating, and digging. In STEM Zone, children design and launch their own rockets. In UnEarthed, little ones can play make-believe paleontologists and dig for fossils.

ArtSpace hands over real tools for painting and sculpting, while Tennessee RiverPlay lets kids operate a working lock and dam. Traveling with a toddler? Little FarmHouse is built for children five and under, with a play kitchen, a gated baby area, and farm-themed props sized for the youngest visitors. The museum suits families with children roughly age two through twelve, and its rooftop TreeHouse Adventure adds downtown views. It's open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days, with an earlier start at 9 a.m. on Saturdays.

Take a Workshop or Class with Local Makers

The Chattery runs rotating classes for adults in downtown Chattanooga. Recent sessions have covered loom weaving, needle felting, sourdough baking, and floral design, taught by local makers. In ReWeave: Loom Making & Weaving Workshop, local seamstress Chelsea Weiss guides participants through building their own sustainable weaving loom from a wooden frame, then weaving on it, a piece you take home at the end of class.

Most classes run one evening and require booking ahead, though pop-up speed-learning nights let you sample several skills, no experience required. Stay updated with the events calendar for similar opportunities to take home a souvenir you made yourself.

Get Active at High Point Climbing

Downtown, High Point Climbing pairs 45-foot rope walls with more than 100 bouldering problems, plus outdoor walls above Broad Street. The gym opens at 6 a.m. on weekdays and stays open until 10 p.m. most nights. Every first-timer starts with a climbing orientation, so no experience is needed to boulder or use an auto-belay.

Solo climbers are welcome on the bouldering walls and auto-belays. A Kid Zone welcomes climbers as young as three, while teens and adults can push further on the rope walls or outdoor routes.

Create and Discover Art Across Chattanooga

In the Bluff View Art District, River Gallery fills connected rooms with studio glass and sculpted clay from regional artists, worth a slow walk-through near the Hunter Museum. Exhibits rotate monthly. A recent show paired glass sculpture by Curtiss Brock and Thomas Spake with abstract paintings by Jennifer Rivera and Brad Robertson, so each visit turns up something new.

For a more active art experience, iGNiS Glass Studio on Broad Street lets visitors blow their own glass ornament or paperweight, starting at around $50 per design. Working with a professional glassblower, you'll choose your colors, shape the molten glass in a 2,000-degree furnace, then blow your own breath into the final piece. The process takes about 15 minutes, and your finished piece is ready for pickup the next day.

Take a Different Approach to Exploring Chattanooga

For a free, self-directed way to explore, pick up the Chattanooga Information Center's Experience Art Scavenger Hunt. The mission: track down a set of clues scattered within about a mile of the Information Center on Aquarium Plaza, each one pointing toward a piece of public art. Chattanooga has more than 105 permanent outdoor artworks, so there's plenty to track down. Set aside a couple of hours, leaving space to wander or stay longer at the spots you enjoy most.

For a hands-on history lesson, head east of downtown to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. The Missionary Ridge Local, a 65-minute train ride, passes through the pre-Civil War Missionary Ridge Tunnel and stops partway for a live turntable demonstration and a guided tour of the restoration shop. Departure times vary by day and season, so book ahead, especially on weekends. From mid-March through mid-October, select weekend departures swap in a historic steam locomotive for an extra treat.

One activity moves at a walking pace, the other at a rolling one, but both work well as a change of pace between the more active stops in this guide.