Surrounded by fifty acres of showpiece gardens, the magnificent Art Deco Louisiana State Capitol (daily 8am-4.30pm; free) serves as a monument to Huey Long , the "Kingfish," the larger-than-life state governor who ordered its construction in 1931 and was assassinated in its corridors just four years later. First elected governor in 1928 after a vehemently anti-big-business campaign, Long swiftly concentrated power into his own hands. His massive program of public works included financing charity hospitals by levying heavy taxes on the big oil and gas corporations. Variously labeled a demagogue, communist and fascist, he set himself apart from other Southern populists of the time by refusing to exploit the race issue. Just as his appeal - with slogans like "Every Man a King" - began to reach national proportions, with a bid for the presidency in the offing, he was shot by a local doctor whose exact motives remain unknown.

Other controversial figures to have worked in the building include the segregationist country singer Jimmie Davis , better remembered for writing You Are My Sunshine and riding his horse up the steps of the capitol than for any political skills, and David Duke , a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was elected as a state representative in 1989 and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor in 1991.

Tours of this stunning building, with its huge murals and sculptures, are enlivened by remnants of Louisiana's maverick political history. Guides point out stray bullets in the marble pillars of the ground-floor corridor and a pencil embedded in the ceiling of the legislative chamber by an exploding bomb. Long decreed that nothing in Baton Rouge could be taller than the 450ft capitol, so its 27th-floor observation deck (closes 4pm) is the best vantage point to look out over miles of greenery and the sluggish Mississippi

Louisiana State Capitol

• Louisiana State Capitol

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