The Greater Columbus area is further home to the headquarters of six Fortune 500 companies, namely Cardinal Health, American Electric Power, Bath & Body Works, Inc., Nationwide, Bread Financial and Huntington Bancshares.

Colonists from the East Coast moved in, but rather than finding an empty frontier, they encountered people of the Miami, Delaware, Wyandot, Shawnee and Mingo nations, as well as European traders.

Named in honor of Christopher Columbus, the city was founded on February 14, 1812, on the "High Banks opposite Franklinton at the Forks of the Scioto most known as Wolf's Ridge.

To prevent flooding, the Army Corps of Engineers recommended widening the Scioto River through downtown, constructing new bridges and building a retaining wall along its banks.

The 2010 United States foreclosure crisis forced the city to purchase numerous foreclosed, vacant properties to renovate or demolish them – at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

[citation needed] In February and March 2020, Columbus reported its first official cases of COVID-19 and declared a state of emergency, with all nonessential businesses closed statewide.

[74] On Saturday, November 19th, 2024, about a dozen masked men dressed in black carried red swastika flags in Columbus chanting racial slurs and using pepper spray.

[109][110] Due to its demographics, which include a mix of races and a wide range of incomes, as well as urban, suburban and nearby rural areas, Columbus is considered a "typical" American city, leading retail and restaurant chains to use it as a test market for new products.

[116] In July 2012, three years prior to legal same-sex marriage in the United States, the Columbus City Council unanimously passed a domestic partnership registry.

The Italian explorer, erroneously credited with the lands' discovery, has been posthumously criticized by historians for initiating colonization and for abuse, enslavement and subjugation of natives.

[127] Places of worship include Baptist, Evangelical, Greek Orthodox, Latter-day Saints, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Quaker, Roman Catholic, and Unitarian Universalist churches.

Columbus also hosts several Islamic mosques, Jewish synagogues, Buddhist centers, Hindu temples and a branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Columbus has a generally strong and diverse economy based on education, insurance, banking, fashion, defense, aviation, food, logistics, steel, energy, medical research, health care, hospitality, retail and technology.

The administration of former mayor Michael B. Coleman continued this work, although the city faced financial turmoil and had to increase taxes, allegedly due in part to fiscal mismanagement.

In 2019, the city had six corporations named to the U.S. Fortune 500 list: Alliance Data, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, American Electric Power, L Brands, Huntington Bancshares and Cardinal Health in suburban Dublin.

Major foreign corporations operating or with divisions in the city include Germany-based Siemens and Roxane Laboratories, Finland-based Vaisala, Tomasco Mulciber Inc., A Y Manufacturing, as well as Switzerland-based ABB and Mettler Toledo.

Wendy's, the world's third-largest hamburger fast-food chain, operated its first store downtown as both a museum and a restaurant until March 2007, when the establishment was closed due to low revenue.

Built of Columbus limestone from the Marble Cliff Quarry Co., the Statehouse stands on foundations 18 feet (5.5 m) deep that were laid by prison labor gangs rumored to have been composed largely of masons jailed for minor infractions.

Preservationists and the public have sometimes run into conflict with developers hoping to revitalize an area, and historically with the city and state government, which led programs of urban renewal in the 20th century.

The museum, founded in 1878, focuses on European and American art up to early modernism that includes extraordinary examples of Impressionism, German Expressionism and Cubism.

It features over 400 species of plants in a large Victorian-style glass greenhouse building that includes rain forest, desert and Himalayan mountain biomes.

Throughout the summer, the Actors' Theatre of Columbus offers free performances of Shakespearean plays in an open-air amphitheater in Schiller Park in historic German Village.

Movies filmed in the Columbus metropolitan area include Teachers in 1984, Tango & Cash in 1989, Little Man Tate in 1991, Air Force One in 1997, Traffic in 2000, Speak in 2004, Bubble in 2005, Liberal Arts in 2012, Parker in 2013, and I Am Wrath in 2016, Aftermath in 2017, They/Them/Us in 2021, and Bones and All in 2022.

The Hilltop Bean Dinner is an annual event held on Columbus's West Side that celebrates the city's Civil War heritage near the historic Camp Chase Cemetery.

Also nearby is 77 North Front Street, which holds Columbus's city attorney office, income-tax division, public safety, human resources, civil service and purchasing departments.

[189] Poverty and differences in quality of life have grown, as well; Columbus was noted as the second-most economically segregated large metropolitan area in 2015, in a study by the University of Toronto.

There are also neighborhood- or suburb-specific papers, such as the Dispatch Printing Company's ThisWeek Community News, the Columbus Messenger, the Clintonville Spotlight and the Short North Gazette.

Formerly known as Port Columbus, John Glenn provides service to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Cancun, Mexico (on a seasonal basis), as well as to most domestic destinations, including all the major hubs along with San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

Six Columbus pilots, led by top ace Eddie Rickenbacker, achieved 42 "kills" – a full 10% of all US aerial victories in the war, and more than the aviators of any other American city.

Cycling as transportation is steadily increasing in Columbus with its relatively flat terrain, intact urban neighborhoods, large student population and off-road bike paths.