The Ultimate St. Augustine, FL Tour - America's Oldest City! 🏰🌉 See the Absolute Best Aerial Views!

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Flagler College | Castillo de San Marcos Fort | St. Augustine Lighthouse | Memorial Presbyterian Church | The Great Cross | City Hall, Lightner Museum, Alcazar Hotel | The Bridge of Lions | The Huguenot Cemetery | Fort Matanzas | Historic Watchtower.

St. Augustine was founded on September 8, 1565, by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first governor. The city served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years. It became the capital of British East Florida in 1763 and continued as the capital after the 1783 Treaty of Versailles in the Second Spanish Period.

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Flagler College | Forte Castillo de San Marcos | Faro di St. Augustine | Chiesa Presbiteriana Memoriale | La Grande Croce | Municipio, Museo Lightner, Hotel Alcazar | Il Ponte dei Leoni | Il Cimitero degli Ugonotti | Forte Matanzas | Torre di Guardia Storica. St. Augustine fu fondata l'8 settembre 1565 dall'ammiraglio spagnolo Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, primo governatore della Florida. La città fu capitale della Florida spagnola per oltre 200 anni. Divenne capitale della Florida orientale britannica nel 1763 e mantenne tale ruolo anche dopo il Trattato di Versailles del 1783, durante il secondo periodo spagnolo.

0:11 Flagler College is a private liberal arts college in St. Augustine, Florida, United States. The campus comprises 49 acres, the centerpiece of which is the Ponce de León Hotel, built in 1888 as a luxury hotel.

0:51 The Castillo de San Marcos (Spanish for “St. Mark’s Castle”) is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. It was designed by the Spanish engineer Ignacio Daza, with construction beginning in 1672, 107 years after the city's founding by Spanish Admiral and conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, when Florida was part of the Spanish Empire.

1:23 The St. Augustine Lighthouse Station stands at the north end of Anastasia Island and was built between 1871 and 1874. The tower is the second lighthouse tower in St. Augustine, the first being lit officially by the American territorial government in May 1824 as Florida's first lighthouse.

1:39 The Memorial Presbyterian Church is a historic church constructed in 1889 by American industrialist Henry Morrison Flagler. It was dedicated to the memory of his daughter Jennie Louise Benedict, who died following complications from childbirth at sea in March 1889.

2:07 The Great Cross was dedicated by Archbishop Casimiro Morcillo of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madrid during the diocesan Eucharistic Congress of October 1966 at the direction of Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Mission Nombre de Dios. It is made of stainless steel and towers 208 feet above the Matanzas marshes.

2:31 City Hall / Lightner Museum / Alcazar Hotel opened as a companion to the Ponce de Leon in 1888. The hotel remained closed from 1932 until publisher O.C. Lightner purchased the building in 1947 and deeded it to the city for use as a museum for his extensive collection of Victorian memorabilia. After remodeling, the building was dedicated as St. Augustine City Hall on April 27, 1973. The Lightner Museum reopened to the public on August 12, 1974.

2:54 The Bridge of Lions is a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Intracoastal Waterway. A part of State Road A1A, it connects downtown St. Augustine to Anastasia Island across Matanzas Bay. A pair of copies of the marble Medici lions guard the bridge, begun in 1925 and completed in 1927. Roads & Bridges magazine named the Bridge of Lions as fourth in the nation's top 10 bridges for 2010.

3:18 The Huguenot Cemetery (also known as the St. Augustine Public Burying Ground) in St. Augustine, Florida, located across from the historic City Gate was a Protestant burial ground between the years 1821 and 1884.

3:26 Fort Matanzas was built by the Spanish in 1742 to guard Matanzas Inlet, the southern mouth of the Matanzas River, which could be used as a rear entrance to the city of St. Augustine. Such an approach avoided St. Augustine's primary defense system, centered at Castillo de San Marcos.

3:51 Historic Watchtower. When St. Augustine was founded in September of 1565, the spyglass had yet to be invented, so only the sharpest-eyed men were hand-picked for watchtower duty. On June 6, 1586, Sir Francis Drake with two thousand men and 42 ships spotted a light in the watchtower. Drake and his men sacked, looted and burned the entire town and wooden fort in an epic raid, taking two thousand pounds sterling in silver from the burning ruins.