Middleton Place Plantation

Nothing rings with the aura of the Old South like a great plantation, and Charleston has several to show off. In addition to its fully furnished plantation house, Middleton Place is further distinguished by America’s oldest landscaped gardens.

Stretching in a magnificent series of descending terraces, hedged galleries, and pools, the grounds show off their symmetrical 17th-century European design. The gardens bloom year-round with rare camellias in the winter and azaleas in the spring.

On a tour of the 1755 house, you’ll learn about four generations of the Middletons and their slaves as you see furniture, silver, rare books, porcelain, and portraits maintained by the same family for more than three centuries.

The Plantation Stableyards recreate life outside the great house, with costumed interpreters demonstrating skills and trades that include blacksmithing, pottery, carpentry, cooperage, and weaving, activities that would have been carried on by slaves on a Low Country rice plantation in the Antebellum years.