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Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, St. Augustine, FL

Photo: Schwerdf, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

SightseeingIconicHistory Buff

Castillo de San Marcos National Monument

Walk the gun deck, casemates and courtyard of a 17th-century Spanish coquina fort on the St. Augustine bayfront.

1 South Castillo Drive · St. Augustine, FL

About Castillo de San Marcos National Monument

Spain built this fort between 1672 and 1695, and the National Park Service calls it the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States. You cross a drawbridge over a dry moat to explore the casemates, the courtyard and the gun deck lined with cannons. The walls are coquina, a shell stone that absorbed English cannonballs during a 1702 siege instead of shattering. Rangers and volunteers in period dress stage musket or cannon demonstrations on select days.

  • #national monument
  • #spanish fort
  • #historic site
  • #cannon firing
  • #st. augustine history

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What's around here?

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