Charleston

GOOD KING CHARLES II KNIGHTED his restorers, giving them all of the land south of Virginia. Carolina would be settled in his name, and in the subtropical virgin forest that covered the landscape, a miniature London — Charles Town—would be re-created to celebrate the Restoration. Founded in 1670, Charleston, as it came to be known, could not have entered the world at a more exciting time. On the heels of the scientific and intellectual developments of the seventeenth century, the city matured in the Enlightenment. With a proprietary government designed by the philosopher John Locke, the city evolved a distinctive social order based on land ownership that was its birth right; it remains its heritage.