Experience the best of Douglas

Douglas is the capital and largest town of the Isle of Man, on the island's east coast in the Irish Sea, around a wide curving bay. It grew in the eighteenth century on trade with Liverpool and on smuggling, and has been a leading holiday resort since about 1870. The island's parliament, Tynwald, moved here from Castletown in 1869. Loch Promenade, laid out in 1878, runs along the bay lined with Victorian hotels, and horse-drawn trams run along it in the season.

The Tower of Refuge, built in 1832 on Conister Rock as a shelter for shipwrecked sailors, was the idea of Sir William Hillary, founder of the lifeboat service. The Manx Museum holds the island's national collection, with Viking-age treasures and carved Celtic crosses. The Manx Electric Railway runs north to Laxey, home of the Great Laxey Wheel, and on to Ramsey, and from Laxey a mountain railway climbs to the summit of Snaefell, at 621 metres.

Queenies, the island's small sweet scallops, kippers, and spuds and herrin', potatoes served with herring, are the Manx dishes. The TT motorcycle races, run on public roads around the island, start and finish at the grandstand in Douglas. The climate is mild and maritime.