If Plymouth has one defining place, it is the Hoe: a limestone clifftop above the Sound, with four hundred years of history strung along it.
The red-and-white striped lighthouse is the city's most photographed landmark. It originally stood on the Eddystone Reef fourteen miles offshore, and was dismantled and rebuilt on the Hoe in the 1880s when the rock beneath it began to erode. You can climb it in season for the view from the lantern room.
A 1935 art deco saltwater lido cut into the foreshore below the Hoe, semi-circular and painted in blue and white. It opens through the summer and is one of the finest surviving lidos in the country. Swimming is in unheated seawater, which is exactly as bracing as it sounds.
The Naval Memorial commemorates Commonwealth naval personnel lost at sea with no known grave, and dominates the eastern end of the Hoe. Around it sit memorials to the Armada, to Sir Francis Drake, and to the city's wartime dead.
From the promenade you look south across Plymouth Sound to the breakwater, west to Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall, and east towards the Mewstone. Naval vessels, ferries and yachts pass through constantly, and it is one of the few city-centre views in Britain that is genuinely maritime.
The Hoe hosts the city's biggest outdoor gatherings: the British Firework Championships in August, Armed Forces Day, Thursday-evening Bike Nights through the summer, and large-scale music and sporting events. Most are free to attend.
The Hoe is a ten-minute walk uphill from the city centre and a similar distance from the Barbican. Parking along Hoe Road and Madeira Road is limited and closes for major events. There are cafés at the eastern end and along the promenade.
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