St. Augustine, Florida

Founded by Spanish colonists in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States. The Castillo de San Marcos, a seventeenth-century Spanish masonry fortress of coquina shellstone, remains fully intact and is the oldest masonry fort in North America. The historic district's narrow streets, built to Spanish colonial proportions, are lined with vernacular architecture spanning four centuries, from Spanish colonial buildings to elaborate Victorian structures built during the Gilded Age railroad era.