Attractions & Natural Wonders · Bermuda
Bermuda: Eight Attractions and Natural Wonders
Pink-sand coves on a coral hook in the mid-Atlantic, England's oldest continuously inhabited town in the New World, and a cave full of underground water clearer than air
By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026
A speck of coral in the open ocean
Bermuda is not in the Caribbean — it sits far out in the Atlantic, off the coast of the Carolinas, and it is much cooler and more English than the tropics. It is a small chain of islands joined into a fishhook shape, built on the rim of an extinct volcano capped with coral. It has no rivers and few natural resources; its history has been about the sea — shipwrecks, the Royal Navy, and, latterly, tourism and offshore finance.
The eight below are strung along the length of the hook, linked by one main road. Distances are short but the speed limit is low (35 km/h) and visitors can't rent cars — you use buses, ferries, taxis, or a rented electric mini-car or scooter. Late spring to autumn is the season.
1. The Town of St George
St George's, at the eastern end, was the island's first settlement and capital until 1815, and it has kept its 17th- and 18th-century street plan and much of its building stock — a UNESCO World Heritage Site (with its ring of forts). Highlights are King's Square with its stocks and pillory, the State House (Bermuda's oldest building), St Peter's Church (the oldest Anglican church in continuous use outside the British Isles), and the tiny, crooked lanes with names like "Old Maid's Lane".
Actors stage a mock ducking-stool punishment in the square in season.
2. The Unfinished Church
On a rise just north of St George's stands a would-be replacement for St Peter's: a full-scale Gothic Revival church begun in 1874 that was never roofed. A combination of a congregation split, storm damage, and money diverted to repair the old church left it a picturesque ruin, its arches and empty windows open to the sky.
It is looked after by the Bermuda National Trust, free to walk around, and a popular spot for photographs and weddings.
3. Fort St Catherine
Bermuda was fortified obsessively — it has more forts per square kilometre than almost anywhere — and Fort St Catherine, near the beach where the Sea Venture castaways came ashore in 1609, is the best restored. Rebuilt many times into the 1860s, it now has tunnels, a magazine, dioramas of the shipwreck, and replicas of the Crown Jewels.
The beach below, Achilles Bay, and neighbouring Tobacco Bay are among the best swimming spots on the island.
4. Tobacco Bay
Tobacco Bay is a small, sheltered cove ringed by weathered limestone stacks that break the swell and shelter a shallow reef close to shore — easy, protected snorkelling with parrotfish and the occasional turtle. There is a beach bar and gear rental, and it gets busy when a cruise ship is in St George's.
It also has a footnote in history: during the American Revolution, sympathisers rolled stolen barrels of British gunpowder down to this beach to ship to George Washington's army.
5. Crystal Cave
Bermuda's coral limestone is riddled with caves, and Crystal Cave is the show cave: a chamber of white stalactites and stalagmites above a pool of tidal seawater so clear that the floating pontoon bridge across it seems to hover. The water is up to 17 metres deep and the bottom is plainly visible.
The adjacent Fantasy Cave is on the same ticket. Both are near the Blue Hole Park and the swimming grotto at the Grotto Bay hotel.
6. Horseshoe Bay and the south-shore beaches
Bermuda's south shore, along the outer curve of the hook, is a run of pink-sand coves separated by limestone headlands. Horseshoe Bay is the famous one — a broad crescent with a lifeguard, a café, and, at its western end, a chain of smaller hidden coves (Jobson's, Chaplin, Warwick Long Bay) that you can walk between.
The colour is real: red pigment from a shelled organism called Homotrema rubrum, washed off the reef and mixed into the white coral sand.
7. Gibbs Hill Lighthouse
On the highest hill in the parish of Southampton, this 36-metre cast-iron tower has warned ships off Bermuda's encircling reefs since 1846. You can climb the 185 steps for a 360-degree view over the whole island — on a clear day you see both ends of the hook — and there is a café in the former keeper's cottage at the base.
The reefs it guards have sunk hundreds of ships over the centuries, and wreck diving is one of Bermuda's specialities.
8. Hamilton
Hamilton, the capital, is a compact pastel harbour town — the seat of government, the cruise dock, and the shopping street of Front Street with its colonnaded stores. The Gothic Revival cathedral has a climbable tower; Fort Hamilton above town has a moat garden and a Sunday skirling of pipers; and the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute and the National Gallery cover the island's marine and art history.
At the far western tip, the former Royal Naval Dockyard — now a complex of museums, shops, and the National Museum of Bermuda in the old keep — is the other main hub, linked to Hamilton by a fast ferry.
Bermuda is a short trip built around the water: a few days is enough for the town of St George, the caves, the dockyard, and a slow working along the south-shore beaches.