The South Carolina State Museum is housed in a massive Victorian textile mill on Gervais Street at the edge of the Vista district. Four floors cover natural history (including a full-scale replica of the prehistoric shark Megalodon), South Carolina history from indigenous settlement through the Civil War and beyond, science and technology, and art. The Civil War galleries are particularly strong, covering both the Confederacy and the enslaved people whose lives were transformed by the war.
The building is well worth seeing for itself — the Columbia Mills complex was the first electrically powered factory in the world when it opened in 1894, and the industrial bones show through. Allow two to three hours. There is also a small planetarium and an observatory with public viewing nights on clear evenings.