Sixth Floor Museum

Ask most people where they were when President Kennedy was shot and, chances are, they'll remember – such was the resonance of that event. Located in the former Texas School Book Depository on the corner of Houston and Elm streets, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza was born out of a public desire to learn more about the assassination and is still one of Dallas’s most popular visitor attractions today.

However, it’s one thing to read about the event but quite another to experience it up-close. Feel the shivers go down your spine as you stand beside the “Sniper’s Perch” at the south-east corner window of the sixth floor and gaze across the grassy knoll.

Using historical documentary footage, photographs and artifacts, the permanent exhibition “John F. Kennedy and the Memory of a Nation” charts the life and legacy of the beloved president within the wider social and political context of the time. Housing a superb archival collection of personal and political material associated with the life and death of Kennedy, this is one attraction that simply must be at the top of any cultural itinerary.

The museum also offers visitors a unique opportunity to examine the documents and images from the FBI and Warren Commission investigations, which were carried out a year after the event. The commission concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. Why not examine the evidence and see if you agree?

The Museum Bookstore in the Sixth Floor Museum Visitor’s Centre holds a large collection of Kennedy-related memorabilia and is the perfect place to pick up some souvenirs.

If visiting the old Book Depository has left you hungry for more, then fear not the museum is running a special programme of first-hand accounts of those who witnessed the assassination in 2013. The series is entitled “The 2013 Living History Series” and, with guest speakers such as Buell Wesley Frazier, who worked with Oswald and witnessed the assassination, this is an event not to be missed.