Standing atop the Castillo’s San Carlos Bastion and peering across Matanzas Bay toward low-lying Anastasia Island, it wasn’t difficult to imagine the enemy fleet in the Atlantic beyond.  Our guide, describing the Castillo’s defensive features while recounting the siege of 1740, gestured for us to look over the side as she pointed out a secret weapon; a sort of 18^th century stealth technology. 

“I’ll take St. Augustine or leave my bones before its walls,” swore James Oglethorpe as he laid siege to the Castillo de San Marcos and its Spanish garrison at St. Augustine.  Oglethorpe intended to drive the Spanish from Florida before they could attack his new British colony of Georgia.  But the Spanish Commander, Governor Manuel de Montiano had other ideas.  He pledged to, “. . . shed his last drop of blood in defense of St. Augustine.”  

Throughout our week-long visit in St. Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the continental United States, we discovered a lively city with nearly 450 years of often turbulent history.  In 1565, some 55 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Pedro Menéndez de Alvarez led a force of soldiers and missionaries ashore to found “San Augustin.”  By the time Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. in 1821, St. Augustine had served as the capital of Spanish (and briefly, British) Florida for two and one-half centuries. 

A number of buildings in St. Augustine bear the label, “oldest.”  The Gonzalez-Alvarez House, maned after two families who resided there for extended periods, “The Oldest House” is a National Historic Landmark acquired by the Historical Society in 1918.  It illuminates nearly three centuries of life in St. Augustine.  Our guide, Bill Temme told us that the earliest documentation of the house dates from 1727, though it had been built sometime prior, perhaps around 1715.  The house started out as a two-room, flat-roofed structure, in appearance remarkably similar to an adobe house of that same period in Santa Fe.  

Nearby, the Old St. Augustine Village museum complex contains nine historic houses acquired over decades during the mid-20^th century by philanthropist Kenneth W. Dow.  Museum curator Tom Muir explained that the Prince Murat House, the oldest, dates from about 1790. 

Living history of the Spanish Colonial era, circa 1740, inhabits the Spanish Quarter Village.  Skilled, costumed docents demonstrate traditional crafts such as blacksmithing, woodcarving, and palm thatching throughout the site that includes nine mostly reconstructed buildings and gardens. 

Florida’s fourth-graders get a hands-on lesson in the city’s unique colonial history at the Spanish Quarter Village, and so did we.  A “Senora Gallegos” escorted us on a tour of her comparatively comfortable home, with a rare indoor kitchen.  

The nearby city gate, dating from 1808, brackets the north end of St. George Street, colonial St. Augustine’s main commercial thoroughfare and today a pedestrian-only street from the gate to the central plaza.  Just outside the gate, the main visitor information center is a good place to begin a visit to historic St. Augustine.  

We don’t recommend driving around on the narrow streets of the old city, but historic St. Augustine is compact enough to sightsee on foot.  Or, take a ride on either the Red Train or the Green Trolley while listening to a narrative on the city sights.  Horse-drawn, open-air carriages also ply the streets of the old city offering a more leisurely, historically correct, mode of travel. 

We walked through the City Gate and strolled south along St. George Street, where one and two-story buildings in the Spanish style crowd the street, some with overhanging second-floor balconies.  Many are careful reconstructions of colonial-era buildings that once occupied the sites.  Others are original, among the 36 buildings in town that date from before 1821.  Restaurants, shops and museums occupy most of the ground-floor spaces, making for a lively street. 

Sixty years of relative quiet followed Florida’s acquisition by the United States.  Then Henry Flagler determined to make historic St. Augustine, with its salubrious winter climate and nearby beaches, into the “Newport of the South,” attracting wealthy Northerners for the season.  Flagler constructed the sumptuous Ponce de Leon and Alcazar Hotels, and amused his guests with yacht races, golf tourneys and oyster roasts on North Beach. 

Wealthy winter visitors eventually moved south with the railroad, but Flagler’s two neo-Moorish-style hotels, of innovative, poured-in-place concrete construction, still dominate St. Augustine’s skyline.  The Ponce de Leon is now Flagler College, and the Alcazar serves as St. Augustine’s City Hall and houses the Lightner Museum.  The Lightner’s large and eclectic collection of collections including glass, porcelain, furniture and cigar bands as well as painting and sculpture, have gained it the nickname, “The Smithsonian of the South.” 

Perhaps our hunger for history stimulated our hunger for food.  We dined on the huge, signature house salad, paella, and Cuban roast pork, accompanied by sangria at the Columbia Restaurant on St. George Street.   Another evening we chowed-down on ribs and corn-on-the-cob in the friendly ambience of The Salt Water Cowboy, perched on piers overlooking wetlands on Anastasia Island.  

St. Augustine’s Spanish garrison constructed Fort Matanzas between 1740 and 1742 at the southern end of Anastasia Island to guard against attacks from the south.  At the fort, now a national monument, rangers conduct free guided tours, bringing visitors to the fort in a small boat. 

Florida’s first official lighthouse was built in 1824 near the northern end of Anastasia Island.  The present candy-cane-striped, 165-foot tower was constructed in 1871 when coastal erosion threatened an earlier light.  Now automated, the light retains its first-order Fresnel lens.   We summoned the energy to climb the 219 steps of the tower and were rewarded with a fine view of the coast, the harbor and the city.