St Ives

St Ives was a pilchard port until the fishery collapsed, and artists arrived for the light, which comes off water on three sides and is unusually clear. Whistler and Sickert visited in 1884; a colony formed, and after 1939 Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson moved down with the potter Bernard Leach already established, making the town a centre of British modernism. In 1928 the painters found Alfred Wallis, a retired mariner painting ships on scraps of card in a style nobody had taught him, and his work changed how several of them worked. Tate St Ives opened in 1993 above Porthmeor beach. The Barbara Hepworth Museum is her house and garden, with sculptures placed where she left them, which is the more affecting of the two.

What you actually see

• The Hepworth Museum - her studio and garden with sculptures as she placed them.
• Tate St Ives - a gallery above Porthmeor beach showing the St Ives school.
• The Leach Pottery - Bernard Leach's workshop, still producing.
• The branch line - a short railway running along the estuary and cliffs.

When to go

May, June and September for the town without August crowds; the September festival brings music and art. Winter is quiet, and the light the painters came for is arguably at its best then.

Honest expectations

St Ives in August is overwhelmed, with traffic queues into the town and almost no parking; the park and ride at St Erth with the branch train is the sensible approach. Second-home ownership has hollowed out the town and locals are vocal about it. Seagulls take food from hands aggressively.

Nearby

Zennor and the north coast lie west; Penzance and St Michael's Mount are south.