Experience the best of Norwalk

Norwalk lies on Long Island Sound in Fairfield County, where the Norwalk River flows into a harbour dotted with islands. The city grew as an oyster port and a manufacturing town, and its historic South Norwalk district, known as SoNo, has restored brick buildings, restaurants and a waterfront. The Maritime Aquarium, beside the river, shows the marine life of the Sound, and the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, a Second Empire house of the 1860s, is a showpiece of the Gilded Age.

The Norwalk Islands, a scatter of small wooded islands offshore, are reached by boat, and Sheffield Island has a lighthouse of 1868. Calf Pasture Beach and Cranbury Park provide shore and woodland closer to town. Weir Farm National Historical Park, the farm and studio of the Impressionist painter J. Alden Weir, lies just north in Wilton, and Stamford and Westport are neighbours along the coast.

Oysters from the Sound, once the city's trade, are served raw and fried, and SoNo's restaurants range from pizza places to seafood kitchens. Sea breezes soften the humid summers, autumn is bright, and winter snow is usually brief.