Current Time in Newport, United States

Newport is a historic coastal city located on the southern tip of Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. With a population of approximately 24,000 permanent residents, Newport is one of the most historically rich, architecturally distinguished, and culturally vibrant small cities in New England. Its extraordinary collection of Gilded Age mansions, its deep colonial heritage, its legendary sailing tradition, and its celebrated music festivals have made it one of the most visited cities in New England and a destination of global cultural significance.

Newport's history reaches back to its founding in 1639 as one of the earliest settlements in Rhode Island, established by religious dissenters from Massachusetts seeking freedom of worship. During the colonial period, the city became one of the five largest and most prosperous ports in colonial America, growing wealthy through trade, shipbuilding, and, less honorably, the slave trade. The colonial heritage is preserved in a remarkable collection of 18th-century buildings, including the Touro Synagogue (1763), the oldest surviving synagogue in North America and a National Historic Site, the Colony House, and numerous 18th-century merchant houses, churches, and public buildings.

Newport's most spectacular attractions are its Gilded Age mansions, known locally as cottages despite their palatial scale, built by the wealthiest families in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as summer retreats. The Breakers, a 70-room Italian Renaissance palace built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II in 1895 and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, is the largest and most magnificent of the Newport mansions and receives approximately 400,000 visitors annually. Marble House, also by Vanderbilt, The Elms (modeled on a French château), Rosecliff (used as a location in The Great Gatsby), and Chateau-sur-Mer are among the other principal mansions open to the public and managed by the Preservation Society of Newport County.

Newport has been the center of American sailing since the 19th century. The America's Cup, the oldest international sailing trophy in the world, was defended in Newport for decades, and the city remains deeply associated with elite sailing culture. The International Tennis Hall of Fame, housed in the Newport Casino (1880), a National Historic Landmark designed by McKim, Mead and White, celebrates the history of tennis in America, where the sport was first played on a grass court in Newport in 1881.

The Newport Jazz Festival, founded in 1954 as the world's first outdoor jazz festival, and the Newport Folk Festival (founded 1959, where Bob Dylan controversially played an electric guitar in 1965) are among the most historically important music events in American cultural history and continue to attract major artists and devoted audiences each summer. The Cliff Walk, a 5.5-kilometer walking path along the rocky shoreline between the mansions and the Atlantic Ocean, is one of the most scenic urban walks in New England.

Newport's combination of colonial heritage, Gilded Age grandeur, sailing tradition, legendary music festivals, and beautiful ocean setting makes it one of the most complete and culturally rich destinations in New England, a city where the full range of American history and culture is on display in extraordinary concentrated form.