Cockburn Town is the sleepy administrative capital of the Turks and Caicos Islands, spread along the western shore of Grand Turk. Despite its status as the country's seat of government, it feels less like a capital than a well-preserved colonial village — which is precisely its appeal.
Duke Street and Front Street are lined with handsome 18th and 19th-century buildings in the Bermudan style, painted in pastels and shaded by wide verandas. The architecture dates from the salt-raking era, when Grand Turk was one of the Atlantic's major salt producers and enough merchants grew prosperous to build properly. The Turks and Caicos National Museum on Front Street, housed in a 160-year-old building, covers the islands' history from the pre-Columbian Lucayan people through the salt era and into the present.
Grand Turk is also strongly associated with Columbus's 1492 landfall in the New World — the island is a serious contender, though the matter remains disputed by historians. What's not disputed is the quality of the diving: the western wall drops to extreme depth just offshore, and the reef has been largely untouched by development.