Charleston

Thirteen pastel 18th-century merchants' houses stand shoulder to shoulder along East Bay Street. Owners restored and painted them from the 1930s on, and all are private homes you cannot enter. The fronts catch the morning sun, so photos come out best early.

A seawall promenade at the peninsula's southern tip, named for the gun batteries that stood here in the Civil War. Grand houses face the water behind it, and cannons remain in the park. At high tide in a strong wind the sea tops the wall and floods the road.

The Civil War began here in April 1861, when Confederate guns opened fire on the fort. It sits on an island mid-harbour, reached only by the park-approved ferry from the city docks, and each trip allows about an hour on the fort.

Long roofed sheds dating from the 1790s run four blocks. Gullah weavers sell sweetgrass baskets here and along the roads, and since one basket can take weeks, prices run high. A night market sets up on Fridays and Saturdays.

Laid out from the 1740s, it is counted the oldest landscaped garden in the United States. Twin ponds dug in the shape of butterfly wings and terraced lawns step down to the river. A house telling the lives of the people enslaved here is shown too.

A former cotton plantation on James Island where tours centre on the slave cabins and their people, not the big house. People lived in the cabins long after emancipation, until around 1990. The great oak in the yard has stood for centuries.

A live oak on Johns Island throws limbs so far sideways that some rest on the ground, shading about 1,600 square metres. It is reckoned several hundred years old. No ticket is needed; the gate shuts in late afternoon, and climbing is forbidden.

Across the Cooper River in Mount Pleasant, the Second World War aircraft carrier Yorktown floats as a museum. Warplanes line the flight deck, and steep steel ladders lead up to the bridge and down to the engine rooms. Fort Sumter ferries leave from here too.

On Wadmalaw Island, one of the few large tea farms in North America, where a trolley rolls between fields harvested by machine. The factory tour behind glass is free, and the shop pours the estate's own tea.

A beach town some 20 minutes' drive south, with surf shops and a fishing pier. Walk to the island's northern tip and the Morris Island Lighthouse appears alone in the sea. Erosion took the land around it, so it now stands on a drowned shoal.

On the Ashley River, this plantation opened its gardens to the public in 1870, among America's oldest to do so. Early spring camellias and azaleas smother the swamp-side paths. Restored cabins where enslaved families lived are given their own exhibit.

A former plantation in Mount Pleasant where live oaks planted in 1743 form a tunnel just over 1km long along the entrance drive. Draped with Spanish moss, the avenue has starred in many films and series. Nine brick slave cabins survive and serve as exhibits.

A merchant's mansion of 1808, famed for a spiral stair coiling up three floors with no visible support. Tours draw on household records to name the enslaved workers too. Its Meeting Street address lies within easy strolling distance of the Battery.

Opened in June 2023 on Gadsden's Wharf, where nearly 40% of enslaved Africans brought to the country came ashore. Raised on pillars, the building leaves the ground beneath as a memorial garden. Its family history centre helps trace ancestors.

At the tip of Sullivan's Island, a fort whose palmetto log walls absorbed a British fleet's cannon fire in 1776 and won. That victory put the palmetto tree on South Carolina's flag. From its ramparts you look across to Fort Sumter and the harbour mouth.

A park along the Cooper River promenade, centred on a fountain shaped like a pineapple, the symbol of hospitality. On hot days children paddle in its shallow basin. The swinging benches by the water are a pleasant place to watch boats come and go.