Book Charleston attraction tickets

Few American cities wear their history as visibly as Charleston. The South Carolina port sits at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, its low peninsula shaped by centuries of maritime trade, colonial ambition, and the profound weight of the antebellum era. The pastel-fronted single houses of the Battery, the cobbled lanes of the French Quarter, and the spires of St Philip's and St Michael's churches compose a streetscape that has changed remarkably little since the eighteenth century, and the city's designation as one of the most intact historic urban centres in the country is not an idle claim.

The peninsula rewards slow exploration on foot. South of Broad, the grandest antebellum mansions face the harbour behind wrought-iron gates, their piazzas turned to catch the sea breeze in the way Charleston's builders always intended. Moving north, the French Quarter gives way to the Market area, where the Old City Market has operated continuously since the 1790s. East Bay Street and its Rainbow Row, a terrace of Georgian merchant houses painted in faded ochres and pinks, is among the most photographed streetscapes in the American South, and rightly so. The Harleston Village and Cannonborough neighbourhoods, slightly removed from the main tourist circuit, offer a quieter register of the same architectural vocabulary.