King Street Shopping Districts & Touring the Nathaniel Russell vs Aiken-Rhett House Museums

Running for three kilometres north to south down the centre of the Charleston peninsula, King Street has been the commercial spine of South Carolina for 300 years. The city's two finest historic house museums sit just blocks off King Street and can be visited on a single combo ticket.

1. The Two Best Historic House Museums in Charleston

If you only tour two houses inside downtown Charleston, purchase the 2-House Combo Ticket from the Historic Charleston Foundation (check their official site for current admission prices), as these two mansions showcase two opposite approaches to preservation:

1. The 1808 'Nathaniel Russell House' (51 Meeting St, Restored Federal Opulence): built in 1808 for shipping merchant Nathaniel Russell. Step inside to admire America's famous three-storey 'Free-Flying' Elliptical Spiral Staircase, which spirals up three floors with no central columns or beams underneath. The oval drawing rooms are restored to their 1808 Prussian-blue and gold-leaf splendour, while archaeologists have uncovered West African spiritual artefacts inside the rear kitchen house where 18 enslaved people lived and worked.
2. The 1820 'Aiken-Rhett House' (48 Elizabeth St, 'Preserved As Found' Since 1858): in contrast to the Russell House, the Aiken-Rhett House (home of Governor William Aiken Jr.) has not been modernised or repainted since the 1850s. With an audio guide, you walk through peeling 1858 Parisian wallpaper, original gas chandeliers, and out into the most intact 1820s urban enslaved quarters, stables, kitchen and work yard in the South.

2. Walking the 3 Distinct Districts of 'King Street' (South to North)

• Lower King Street (Broad St to Market St, The Antiques District): 18th- and 19th-century antique dealers, silver shops and the 1680s Circular Congregational Church.
• Middle King Street (Market St to Calhoun St, The Fashion & Campus District): boutiques, Croghan's Jewel Box (a 1907 jewellery store in a 1790 single house), and at George Street, the arched gate into the Cistern Yard of the College of Charleston (founded 1770, where scenes of The Notebook were filmed under 250-year-old live oaks).
• Upper King Street (Calhoun St to Line St, The Design & Culinary District): Charleston's lively restaurant and rooftop bar strip.