Explore Charleston

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Calhoun Street, known as Mother Emanuel, has one of the oldest Black congregations in the South, founded in 1816-1817. Its co-founder Denmark Vesey was executed in 1822 after a planned slave revolt, and the church was burned. The present Gothic Revival building dates from 1891. On 17 June 2015 nine worshippers were murdered here during Bible study.

The Old Slave Mart on Chalmers Street was built in 1859 as part of Ryan's Mart, a market where enslaved people were sold at auction; it is believed to be the last surviving slave-auction building in South Carolina. The museum inside tells of the domestic slave trade in Charleston through documents, objects and the accounts of people who were sold here.

Rainbow Row is a series of thirteen Georgian row houses on East Bay Street in Charleston, built from about 1740 by merchants who kept shops on the ground floor facing the old waterfront. Run-down by the early 20th century, they were restored in the 1930s and 1940s and painted in pastel colours. They are private homes, seen from the street.

The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon at the foot of Broad Street was built in 1767-1771 as a customs house and exchange. South Carolina's delegates to the Continental Congress were chosen here, George Washington was received here in 1791, and during the Revolution the British held prisoners in its cellar. Tours visit the great hall and the dungeon.

The South Carolina Aquarium opened in 2000 on the Charleston Harbor waterfront, with views of the USS Yorktown and the Ravenel Bridge. Its exhibits follow the state's waters from the mountains to the sea, with a two-storey Great Ocean Tank of sharks and loggerhead turtles, touch tanks, river otters, and a sea turtle care centre where injured turtles are treated.

The Battery is the seawall and promenade along the southern tip of the Charleston peninsula, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers meet to form Charleston Harbor. Named after a coastal artillery battery, it is lined with 19th-century mansions on East Battery Street and borders White Point Garden, a park with oaks, cannons and monuments, with views towards Fort Sumter.

Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum lies in Mount Pleasant, across Charleston Harbor from the city. Its centrepiece is the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, commissioned in 1943, whose hangar and flight deck hold some 25 historic aircraft. Visitors also board the destroyer USS Laffey and see a Vietnam-era support base and the Medal of Honor Museum.

Fort Sumter is a brick sea fort on an artificial island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. On 12 April 1861 Confederate batteries opened fire on its Union garrison, the first battle of the American Civil War. Part of a national historical park run by the National Park Service, it is reached by ferry from Liberty Square in Charleston or from Patriots Point.

Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, about 13 km north-east of downtown Charleston, has been farmed for more than 300 years. It is reached by an avenue of live oaks planted in 1743. The main house dates from 1936, while nine brick cabins built for enslaved people around 1790-1810 house the Black History in America exhibit, telling of those who built and worked the plantation.