Charleston

King Street is the spine of the peninsula and its main shopping street, running north from the Battery for well over a mile. The southern end around Broad Street is lined with antique dealers; the stretch near Marion Square is all fashion boutiques and big-name stores; and upper King, north of Calhoun Street, is where the city goes out to eat and drink. Marion Square, a broad green lawn once used as a parade ground by the Citadel military college, hosts a much-loved Saturday farmers' market through the warmer months.

TipThe official Visitor Center at 375 Meeting Street, a few blocks east of the square, sells tour tickets, has maps and sits beside a large public car park, a sensible place to leave a car for the day.

Opened in June 2023, the IAAM stands on the site of Gadsden's Wharf, where enormous numbers of captive Africans were landed in the decades around 1800. The building is raised on pillars, leaving the ground beneath open as the African Ancestors Memorial Garden, a quiet space of water, sculpture and the outlines of bodies as they were packed into slave ships. Galleries upstairs trace African origins, the Atlantic crossing, the Gullah Geechee culture of the Lowcountry and the long struggle for freedom and civil rights, and the Center for Family History helps visitors trace African American ancestry.

Give it at least two hours and approach it with the seriousness it asks for. The memorial garden is free to walk through; the galleries require a timed ticket.

TipThe museum is closed on Mondays. Book a time slot online in advance, especially at weekends and in spring.

Four long, open-sided sheds stretch for several blocks from the columned Market Hall on Meeting Street towards East Bay Street. Contrary to a popular myth, this was a food market rather than a place where people were sold. Today it is mostly crafts, souvenirs and snacks, but the reason to come is the Gullah sweetgrass basket makers, whose coiled baskets carry a West African craft passed down through generations. A good basket takes days to make and is priced accordingly.

TipAsk the maker before taking photos of their work, and buy directly from them if you can.

The small grid of streets south of the market, named after the Huguenot refugees who settled here in the late 17th century, holds a remarkable cluster of buildings. The pink Gothic Revival French Huguenot Church on Church Street, completed in the 1840s, is home to one of the very few Huguenot congregations still worshipping in the United States. Across the street, St Philip's, with its tall white steeple, serves a congregation founded in 1680, and its graveyards hold several signers of founding documents. A few steps away, the Dock Street Theatre stands on the site of one of the first purpose-built theatres in the American colonies.

Further south on Meeting Street, the steeple of St Michael's, the oldest surviving church building in the city, has rung its bells over Broad Street since the 1760s.

TipThese are working churches; check opening times on their noticeboards and dress modestly if visiting during services.

After the city banned open-air slave sales in 1856, traders moved indoors to private marts along Chalmers, State and Queen streets. This building at 6 Chalmers Street, part of Ryan's Mart, is thought to be the only surviving building in South Carolina used for slave auctions. The city-run museum inside tells the story of Charleston's role in the domestic slave trade, which forcibly moved around a million American-born people to the cotton and sugar lands of the Deep South. It is small, sobering and essential, and only a short walk from the market.

The most photographed street front in the South is a run of thirteen Georgian merchants' houses along East Bay Street, painted in shades of pink, lemon, mint and sky blue. In the 18th century these were shops with living quarters above, facing the wharves; by the early 20th century the area had become run down, and restorers who arrived in the 1930s painted the facades in the pastel colours that gave the row its name. The houses are private homes, so admire them from the pavement.

Walk a block towards the water for Waterfront Park, where the Pineapple Fountain, swinging benches and a long pier look out over the harbour.

TipCome early in the morning, when the light falls straight on the facades and there are far fewer people.

At the tip of the peninsula, a raised seawall promenade known as the Battery runs past some of the grandest antebellum mansions in the city, with views across the harbour to Fort Sumter. Behind it, White Point Garden is a shady park of enormous live oaks hung with Spanish moss, old cannon and monuments. Walk back north through the quiet streets south of Broad, peering through garden gates; the Nathaniel Russell House on Meeting Street, with its famous free-flying spiral staircase, is one of several historic houses open for tours.

TipCharleston is a low-lying city and parts of the seawall are being rebuilt and raised in stages, so expect some fenced-off sections.

On 12 April 1861, Confederate guns opened fire on this brick fort on an artificial island in the harbour, and the Civil War began. Union forces surrendered after a day and a half of bombardment, then spent most of the war trying to take it back. Today the ruined walls, battered further by Union shelling, are part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. The only way to visit is the authorised ferry run by Fort Sumter Tours, which leaves from Liberty Square downtown, next to the IAAM, and from Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant. The trip takes about two and a quarter hours, with roughly an hour on the island.

TipBook ahead in spring and summer. Private boats may not land at the fort, and national park passes do not cover the ferry fare.

Across the harbour mouth from Fort Sumter, Sullivan's Island is a relaxed barrier island of wide beaches and old beach houses. At its heart, Fort Moultrie has guarded the harbour since 1776, when defenders behind spongy palmetto-log walls drove off a British fleet, the origin of the palmetto on the state flag. The fort has been rebuilt many times, and walking through it is a tour of American coastal defence from the Revolution to the Second World War.

Sullivan's Island was also a main point of arrival for enslaved Africans in colonial times, where captives were held in quarantine before sale. A memorial bench near the fort, placed by the Toni Morrison Society, marks that history. The fort charges a small adult entry fee and accepts cards only.

TipStay on for a swim and a late lunch at one of the casual restaurants on Middle Street; the beach has strong currents near the harbour channel, so swim where others do.

Founded in 1681 in what is now Mount Pleasant, Boone Hall is famous for its avenue of live oaks, planted in 1743, which now meet overhead for nearly a mile. The current mansion is a 1936 Colonial Revival house, not an antebellum one. More significant are the original brick cabins along "Slave Street", which hold exhibits on the lives of the enslaved people who worked the plantation, and a live presentation of Gullah culture, language and song. It remains a working farm, and admission covers all the daily tours.

TipAdmission is $30 for adults in 2026, and the plantation opens later on Sundays. Focus on the cabins and the Gullah presentation rather than the house alone.

If you visit only one plantation, many historians would point you here. Run by Charleston County Parks on James Island, a short drive from downtown, McLeod is presented not as a grand house with gardens but as a place shaped by the people enslaved on it and by their descendants, who stayed on and worked the land after emancipation. A row of surviving cabins, a cemetery and a giant live oak frame guided tours that follow Gullah Geechee families through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.

TipAdmission is bought on site. Guided tours run several times a day and are the heart of a visit, so arrive in time for one.

Strung along the Ashley River Road west of the city, Magnolia has been owned by the Drayton family since the 1670s, and its romantic, informal gardens, thick with azaleas and camellias, are among the oldest public gardens in the country. Beyond the gardens and the house, the plantation has restored several cabins once lived in by enslaved people and later by freedpeople, and its "From Slavery to Freedom" programme tells their stories. Swamp boardwalks, wading birds and alligators add to a long day out.

TipSome tours cost extra on top of general admission and can sell out on busy days; check what is included when you buy.

A few miles further up the river road, Middleton Place has the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States, laid out from the 1740s with terraces, geometric parterres and a pair of butterfly-shaped lakes stepping down to the river. The Middleton family included a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a signer of the secession ordinance. Eliza's House, a cabin named after a woman who lived there after emancipation, houses an exhibition naming the enslaved people who worked the estate, and the stableyards show the skilled trades they practised.

TipMagnolia and Middleton are neighbours; it is easy to combine them, but each deserves at least half a day.

On Johns Island, about 25 minutes' drive south-west of downtown, stands a southern live oak thought to be several hundred years old. It is around 65 feet (20 m) tall, but its real glory is its spread: massive limbs snake out across the ground and shade an area of some 17,000 square feet. The tree sits in a small city park with free entry and a gift shop.

TipThe park is closed on public holidays. Food, drinks, blankets, props and tripods are not allowed around the tree, and you must not climb on the branches.

Charleston's easy-going surf town is about 20 minutes from downtown across James Island. Centre Street is lined with taco shacks, bars and surf shops, and a long fishing pier reaches out into the Atlantic. At the island's quiet northern tip, the Lighthouse Inlet Heritage Preserve has a sandy path to a viewpoint over the striped Morris Island Lighthouse, now standing in the sea after the shoreline retreated around it.

TipParking fills fast on summer weekends; arrive before 10am or come in the late afternoon.

Georgia's oldest city lies roughly two hours' drive south-west along the coast. Founded in 1733, Savannah was laid out around a grid of leafy squares, and wandering from one to the next under the moss-draped oaks, past Forsyth Park's fountain and the cobbled riverfront, is the whole pleasure. It makes a long but rewarding day; stay overnight if you can.