St Ives Harbour
St Ives is one of the most beautiful and most visited small towns in Britain, a former fishing port on the north coast of the Penwith Peninsula in west Cornwall whose combination of a working harbour, excellent sandy beaches, a long tradition of attracting artists and the Tate St Ives gallery of modern and contemporary art makes it one of the most culturally rich small destinations in England. The town faces north into St Ives Bay with the harbour in the centre and the beaches of Porthminster, Porthmeor and Carbis Bay on either side, each with their own character and the characteristic turquoise water of the Penwith coast.
The harbour is the heart of St Ives, its stone quays enclosing a basin where fishing vessels, pleasure craft and the ferry to the Seal Island still operate alongside the tourist activity that has transformed the town since the nineteenth century. The quality of light in St Ives, a combination of the maritime air, the reflection from the surrounding sea and the clarity of the Cornish atmosphere, was identified by artists from Whistler and Sargent onward as being of particular quality for painting, and the artistic colony that developed from the 1880s onward eventually produced one of the most significant concentrations of modern British art outside London.
The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden in her former studio on the Barnoon hill above the harbour, managed by the Tate, provides the most direct engagement with the most important artist of the St Ives school, her sculptures displayed in the garden and studios where she worked until her death in 1975. The Tate St Ives gallery on the Porthmeor beachfront, designed by Eldred Evans and David Shalev and opened in 1993, presents changing exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in a building of considerable architectural quality whose location above the beach gives it exceptional natural light.
The town's maze of narrow streets and courts, the independent shops and the quality of its seafood restaurants make St Ives a destination that rewards time beyond the galleries and beaches.