Margate

UK, United Kingdom

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Margate is a timeless English seaside holiday town on the Kent coast in southeastern England, combining old-world charm with 21st-century culture and earning the title "capital of British cool".

Originally called "Meregate" meaning "marsh gate" because it lay between two tidal creeks, Margate was one of the first seaside resorts—pioneering donkey rides, deckchairs, mixed bathing in the early 1900s, and bathing facilities for London's middle classes.

The town is famous for its sandy (not pebbly) beaches, the 19th-century Harbour Arm stone pier with cafés, restaurants, and artistic hangouts, and unique attractions including Turner Contemporary art gallery, Dreamland amusement park with the UK's oldest wooden roller coaster, and the Shell Grotto—a winding network of tunnels covered in mosaics made entirely from seashells.

Margate's regenerated Old Town and Harbour Arm are packed with hipster hangouts, buzzy cafes, retro shops, galleries, and the Theatre Royal, Kent's oldest theatre. Notable visitors include artist JMW Turner, who came often to capture the sea and skies, comedian Eric Morecambe, George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot who composed key lines of "The Waste Land" there, Karl Marx, and the Beatles who played six consecutive nights at the Winter Gardens in July 1963.