COSI

COSI opened in the 1960s and grew into one of the most respected science centers in the country, founded on the idea that people, and especially children, learn science best by touching and trying rather than by reading labels. Its exhibits are experiments in disguise, from physics and space to the human body and the workings of everyday technology.

In the late 1990s the center moved into a large new building on the west bank of the Scioto River, a dramatic curved structure that gave it far more room for its hands-on galleries, live demonstrations, and theaters. The new home cemented its place as a downtown landmark and a magnet for school groups and families across the region.

One of the center's biggest draws is its dinosaur gallery, created through a partnership with a leading natural history museum. The gallery brings towering skeletons and immersive prehistoric scenes to Columbus, letting visitors stand beneath the bones of creatures that ruled the Earth long before humans, paired with the interactive, hands-on style that defines the rest of the center.

The collaboration lets COSI, primarily a science-and-technology museum, offer world-class natural history without duplicating a whole separate institution. It is a model of two museums pooling their strengths, and for many young visitors the dinosaurs are the highlight of the day.

Beyond the galleries, COSI runs a planetarium that projects the night sky and journeys through space onto a domed ceiling, and a giant-screen theater for immersive documentary films. Live stage demonstrations, from high-voltage electricity to chemistry that bangs and flashes, punctuate the day and gather crowds around the science.

These programs turn a visit from a walk through exhibits into a series of experiences, and they change over time, so repeat visitors find new shows. It is the mix of self-guided play and scheduled spectacle that keeps the center fresh for families who come back again and again.

COSI sits on a stretch of the Scioto River that Columbus has reshaped into parkland, promenades, and open lawns, part of a broad effort to reconnect the city to its river. From the center's grounds the downtown skyline rises across the water, and riverside trails link it to the rest of the capital's attractions.

This land is part of the ancestral homeland of the Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), and Miami peoples, who lived across central Ohio before being forced westward in the nineteenth century, and whose descendant nations continue today, largely in Oklahoma. Columbus grew up here as the planned capital and is now the state's largest city, with a college-town energy and a growing cultural scene.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.