Roanoke Pinball Museum

The Roanoke Pinball Museum holds over 50 playable machines spanning the 1930s through today, all set to free play for one flat admission price. The collection rotates between vintage electromechanical machines and modern tables — no quarters, no waiting, just the sound of steel balls and flippers echoing through a space that once served different purposes entirely. Roanoke was a railroad town from 1882, when the Norfolk and Western Railway chose the small settlement of Big Lick as its headquarters and built it into a boomtown. The city's population grew twenty-two times in the 1880s. A century later, in 1982, N&W moved its headquarters to Norfolk. The departure left a hole in the economic base. Center in the Square, where the pinball museum now operates, opened in 1983 as part of the city's Design '79 downtown revitalization effort. The center occupies a converted warehouse and has since expanded to five buildings housing twelve institutions, including the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture. The museum sits on the market level, a few blocks from the city's farmers' market — the oldest continuously operating open-air market in Virginia, dating to 1882. The pinball machines themselves are the draw: working examples of mechanical ingenuity from decades of American manufacturing, maintained and playable. Open Wednesday through Sunday; check hours before you go.