The skeletal ruins of Whitby Abbey crown the cliff above the east side of town, reached by the famous 199 steps from the old town below. The first abbey was founded in 657 by St Hilda; it was destroyed by Vikings, refounded as a Benedictine house in 1078, and finally suppressed by Henry VIII in 1539. What stands now is mostly the 13th-century rebuild, its great east end of pointed arches still half-intact against the North Sea sky.
Bram Stoker stayed in Whitby in 1890, climbed up to the abbey, and used the cliff and the harbour as the setting for Dracula's arrival on the Demeter. English Heritage runs the site with a small museum in the adjoining 17th-century Cholmley House. Sunsets, sea mists, and the resident jackdaws make it one of the most atmospheric ruins in England.