Thirty miles south of Providence, NEWPORT stands at the southern tip of the largest island in Narragansett Bay, Aquidneck Island . It was established as a colony by William Coddington of Providence in 1639. Due to its excellent harbor, it grew rapidly as a port for the triangle trade and as a privateering center. Religious tolerance led to an influx of Jews, Quakers and Baptists who formed lucrative international trade links, but this great prosperity was severely knocked back by the British occupation of 1776-79, when half the population fled and much of the town was burned down. Fortunately, enough of its original eighteenth-century homes have survived for Newport to rival Boston in this respect.

In the 1850s the town became fashionable again as a resort for wealthy Southern merchants, and very soon nouveau riche industrialists such as the Astors, Belmonts and Vanderbilts were building " summer cottages " - better described as mansions - along the rocky coastline. The obscene ostentation of this era, now known by Mark Twain's disparaging phrase as the Gilded Age , shocked Massachusetts' old wealth to the core.

Depression killed off the decadence, but Newport kept going as a naval town until the 1970s. Today the town feeds off tourism; much of it caters to the tennis and yachting set, but there are as many people looking at - and envying - the wealth as enjoying it. Though sanitized by the ugly new America's Cup Avenue , which replaced the sea-salt rawness of the waterfront with bars and boutiques, the rough old port still rears its boozy head, with beer and R&B clubs as evident as cocktails and cruises, making it an essential stop, especially during the summer festival season .