After an uncertain start and setbacks along the way, the nation's most elaborate arts festival is still bringing the world to Charleston's doorstep every spring. Now, it's wonderfully restored, with life and energy. Our city has never been more beautiful than it is today. The festival didn't make that happen on its own, of course. The city, private residents and businesses have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last two decades preserving and restoring the city's fabled buildings and tree-lined streets.
Beaches nearby add to the lure for vacationers.
But Spoleto has become as much a signature of this picturesque seaport as the colorful houses of Rainbow Row, horse-drawn carriages on cobbled lanes and elegant mansions along The Battery. For the 60percent of festivalgoers who come from outside South Carolina, the beacon of Spoleto shines more brightly than Fort Sumter. The arts are as much a calling card as history is. He says instead that Spoleto shaped and polished a diamond in the rough. The festival simply magnifies those aspects.