Charleston, SC Hotels

Charleston, SC Hotels

Hotels in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, are often needed for people who need accommodation in the city. Some might want to see the hotels in the state. Some may want to see the luxury or cheap hotels. Some could want to have a place to park. Some people may want to see a hotel that is large or small. Some may want a hotel that has good views. Some may want hotels that can offer views to see, or views from the rooms in the hotel. Some may want a hotel that is close to the part of the city they want to see.

After Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland (1630-1685) was restored to the British throne following Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, he granted the chartered Carolina territory to eight of his loyal friends, known as the Lords Proprietors, in 1663. It took seven years before the Lords could arrange for settlement, the first being that of Charles Town. The community was established by English settlers in 1670 on the west bank of the Ashley River, a few miles northwest of the present city. It was soon chosen by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, one of the Lords Proprietors, to become a "great port towne", a destiny which the city fulfilled. By 1680, the settlement had grown, joined by others from England, Barbados, and Virginia, and relocated to its current peninsular location. The capital of the Carolina colony, Charleston was the center for further expansion and the southernmost point of English settlement during the late 1600s.

The settlement was often subject to attack from sea and from land. Periodic assaults from Spain and France, who still contested England's claims to the region, were combined with resistance from Native Americans, as well as pirate raids. Charleston's colonists erected a fortification wall around the small settlement to aid in its defense. Two buildings remain from the Walled City, the Powder Magazine, where the city's supply of gunpowder was stored, and the Pink House, believed to have been an old colonial tavern.

Charleston's unique but vanishing dialect has long been noted in the South and elsewhere, for the singular attributes it possesses. Alone among the various regional Southern dialects, Charlestonian speakers inglide long mid vowels, such as the raising for /ay/ and /aw/. Some attribute these unique features of Charleston's speech to its early settlement by the French Huguenots and Sephardic Jews, both of which played influential parts in Charleston's development and history. However, given Charleston's high concentration of African-Americans that spoke the Gullah language, the speech patterns were more influenced by the dialect of the Gullah African-American community.

As an old colonial city, Charleston has a wide variety of museums and historical attractions. It has been host to the The Old Exchange and Customs House in downtown Charleston, finished in 1771, is arguably the third most important Colonial building in the nation (behind Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). The building has featured a dungeon which held various signers of the Declaration of Independence, and also hosted events for George Washington in 1791, and the ratification of the USA Constitution in 1788. It has also served as a USA post office, the first Confederate post office, and was used by the United States Coast Guard.

Not far from Charleston has been the location of Fort Moultrie, which was instrumental in delivering a critical defeat to the British in the American Revolutionary War, and Fort Sumter, the reputed site of the first shot of the American Civil War. Patriot's Point, located across the river in nearby Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, has also been home to the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown as well as other naval vessels. There have also been former plantations in the area, including Boone Hall Plantation, Drayton Hall, Magnolia Plantation, and Middleton Place. The Charleston Tea Plantation has been located just south of the city on Wadmalaw Island, and has been a true working tea farm. Charleston's premier art museum has been the Gibbes Museum of Art, which has been one of the country's oldest art organizations and to over 10,000 works of fine art. Also the Charleston Museum was the first Museum in the Americas. Other attractions have included the South Carolina Aquarium, the Audubon Swamp Garden, Cypress Gardens, and Charles Towne Landing which has also been the original settlement area of Charles Towne and the birthplace of what is now considered modern Charleston.