Photo: NealVickers (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Charleston, told plainly as a city built on rice and on the labour and sale of enslaved Africans. It starts a short way north of the cruise terminal at the International African American Museum, on Gadsden's Wharf, where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans were landed, and Mother Emanuel AME Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, where nine members were murdered in 2015. Then Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, the City Market, the Circular Church and the Powder Magazine of 1713; St Philip's, the French Huguenot Church, the Dock Street Theatre and the Old Slave Mart on Chalmers Street. Along Waterfront Park to the Old Exchange, the city's most common place of slave auctions after the Revolution, Rainbow Row, the Heyward-Washington House and the Four Corners of Law, the Nathaniel Russell House, and White Point Garden at the tip of the peninsula, looking out to where Robert Smalls took the Planter in 1862.
17 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 526 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 40 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
International African American Museum, Mother Emanuel AME Church, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston City Market, Circular Congregational Church, Powder Magazine.
St. Philip's Church, French Huguenot Church, Dock Street Theatre, Old Slave Mart.
Waterfront Park, Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, Rainbow Row, Heyward-Washington House, The Four Corners of Law, Nathaniel Russell House, White Point Garden.
Opened in 2023 on Gadsden's Wharf, raised on columns above the ground where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans were landed.
The congregation of Denmark Vesey, burned in the repression of 1822, where nine members were murdered at a Bible study in 2015.
The salesroom of Ryan's Mart, built in 1859, where enslaved people were sold until 1863.
The custom house where the Constitutional Convention met in 1788, and the city's most common place of slave auctions after the Revolution.
The 1808 house of a merchant and trader of captive Africans, run by enslaved people, with a free-flying staircase rising three storeys.
The park at the tip of the peninsula, looking out to where Robert Smalls took the Confederate steamer Planter to the Union blockade in 1862.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 17 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 17 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Charleston — the Old Walled City, the Wharves and the Battery, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
17 narration points, including International African American Museum, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston City Market, Circular Congregational Church and Powder Magazine. That is about 36 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 17 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.