In spite of the extensive studies of the 3-coloring problem with respect to several basic parameters, the complexity status of the 3-coloring problem on graphs with small diameter, i.e. with diameter 2 or 3, has been a longstanding and challenging open question. For graphs with diameter 2 we provide the first subexponential algorithm with complexity $2^{O(\sqrt{n\log n})}$, which is asymptotically the same as the currently best known time complexity for the graph isomorphism (GI) problem. Moreover, we prove that the graph isomorphism problem on 3-colorable graphs with diameter 2 is GI-complete. Furthermore we present a subclass of graphs with diameter 2 that admits a polynomial algorithm for 3-coloring. For graphs with diameter 3 we establish the complexity of 3-coloring by proving that for every $\varepsilon \in [0,1)$, 3-coloring is NP-complete on triangle-free graphs of diameter 3 and radius 2 with $n$ vertices and minimum degree $δ=Θ(n^{\varepsilon})$. Moreover, assuming ETH, we provide three different amplifications of our hardness results to obtain for every $\varepsilon \in [0,1)$ subexponential lower bounds for the complexity of 3-coloring on triangle-free graphs with diameter 3 and minimum degree $δ=Θ(n^{\varepsilon})$. Finally, we provide a 3-coloring algorithm with running time $2^{O(\min\{δΔ,\frac{n}δ\logδ\})}$ for graphs with diameter 3, where $δ$ (resp. $Δ$) is the minimum (resp. maximum) degree of the input graph. To the best of our knowledge, this algorithm is the first subexponential algorithm for graphs with $δ=ω(1)$ and for graphs with $δ=O(1)$ and $Δ=o(n)$. Due to the above lower bounds of the complexity of 3-coloring, the running time of this algorithm is asymptotically almost tight when the minimum degree if the input graph is $δ=Θ(n^{\varepsilon})$, where $\varepsilon \in [1/2,1)$.