Columbia: A guide to short-term rentals

A short-term rental here is the best way to explore all of Columbia, SC's many highlights.

Kasa's short-term rentals in Columbia

With short-term rentals in the city’s most exciting neighborhoods, Kasa offers comfortable and convenient accommodations no matter what brings you to Columbia or where you need to go.

Discover Columbia

After booking your short-term rental in Columbia, here's everything you need to know for your trip.

Located 13 miles from the geographic center of South Carolina, Columbia is the state’s capital city. Columbia proper is home to just 135,000 people, but the Columbia metro area boasts a population of 830,000. Two rivers come together in Columbia: the Saluda and the Broad, which merge to form a third river, the Congaree, that runs through the city center. Columbia is also at the nexus of a system of lakes to the west, north, and east, a gorgeous feature of the state’s Midlands region.

Columbia was founded in 1786 for the sole purpose of forming an alternative state capital to Charleston, 115 miles to the southeast. This compromise helped settle tensions between plantation owners in the coastal Low Country and small farmers in the Up Country, farther inland on the other side of the Midlands. In 1860, Columbia hosted the South Carolina Secession Convention, and South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. At the time, South Carolina had over 400,000 enslaved people, fifth most in the nation. During the Civil War, Columbia was an important Confederate military center. In 1865, the city fell to Union forces led by General Sherman and was badly damaged by fire. During Reconstruction, the city rebuilt its infrastructure and economy, investing in industry and agriculture, and the first African-American legislators were elected to state government.

Today, Columbia is a well-known center of learning, home to the University of South Carolina, the largest university in the state, among a number of other institutions of higher education. Columbia is also the site of Fort Jackson, a vast army installation that hosts basic combat training on a 52,000 acre property with 1,000 buildings. In recent decades, downtown Columbia has emerged as a thriving hub of shops, galleries, restaurants, and museums that cluster around the scenic Congaree River, and there are great short-term rental options near it all.