'Sconset (Siasconset) Village, Nantucket

The village started as a community of fishing shanties in the 1600s. What stands there now — rose-covered, gray-shingled summer cottages, a narrow lane of sea shells open only to foot traffic, an unspoiled beach — is the direct inheritance of that working settlement. Siasconset sits on the eastern edge of Nantucket, 30 miles south of Cape Cod, and it has stayed small enough that the original scale of the place is still legible. That's the reason to go.