Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States — you can drive from end to end in under an hour — but it packs in more coastline, history, and architectural grandeur per square mile than almost anywhere else in America. Officially the "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" until a 2020 referendum shortened the name, it was the first English colony founded on the principle of religious freedom (Roger Williams, 1636), the first to declare independence from Britain (May 1776, two months before the rest), and for much of the 19th century the centre of American textile manufacturing. Today it is one of the most densely populated states, but almost all of that density is concentrated in Providence and the suburbs to the north; most of Narragansett Bay and the southern coast still feels rural and maritime.
Providence, the capital, is a prosperous small college town on Narragansett Bay, anchored by Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and one of the best restaurant scenes in New England. Newport, at the southern tip of Aquidneck Island, is famous for two very different things — its colonial-era sailing port (where Tennis, the Jazz Festival and the America's Cup all became American fixtures) and the extraordinary Gilded Age mansions of Bellevue Avenue, summer cottages built by the Vanderbilts and Astors at the turn of the century that are now the most-visited historic houses in the country. Block Island, 20 km out in the Atlantic and reached by ferry, is the state's quiet corner — a treeless, wind-scoured little island of bluffs, beaches and a single harbour village, famous in birding circles for its spring migration. Narragansett has the best surf beach in New England.
Come in the summer for the beaches and the sailing; come in early October for the fall colour and the empty mansions; come any time for the food. Rhode Island is the only place on earth where you can eat a clam cake, drink a Del's frozen lemonade, and order a coffee milk (the state drink) in the same afternoon.
Destinations in Rhode Island
- Providence
- Newport
- Block Island
- Narragansett
- Warwick
- Coventry
- North Smithfield
