Aiken, South Carolina
The week is
already handled.
A private concierge for Aiken. The house, the table, the tee time, the driver — arranged before you land, in a town that only gives itself up to people who know exactly where to go.
Why this exists
Aiken does not
introduce itself.
People fly in having seen the horses and the oaks and the steeplechase, and expect the town to be that at all hours. It isn’t. The charm here is real, but it is concentrated — particular streets, particular rooms, particular nights of the week.
Left alone, a visitor finds the wrong three blocks, eats somewhere forgettable, and flies home politely unconvinced. They never see the version of Aiken that people move here for.
We remove the guessing. Every hour of the week is chosen by someone who lives here — and who knows precisely which Aiken you are meant to fall in love with.
The Season
Nobody comes to Aiken
by accident.
There is usually a reason, and the reason changes what the week should be. We build it around whichever one brought you.
The first full week of April
Tournament week
Augusta fills, and its beds run out. Aiken is about thirty minutes from the gates, and it is where the people who have done this before quietly stay. We cannot get you through the gate — nobody legitimate can, and anyone who says otherwise will get your badge voided. What we can do is everything on this side of it: the house, the cook, the table at eight, and a driver who has already worked out the traffic on Washington Road.
March, and again in the autumn
The horses
The Aiken Triple Crown runs three consecutive Saturdays each March — the Trials, the Spring Steeplechase, and Pacers & Polo. The jumpers come back in the autumn. If you have never spent a day at a steeplechase tailgate, it is the single best argument this town makes for itself, and we will build the day around it.
Spring and autumn Sundays
Sunday polo
Polo has been played on Whitney Field since 1882 — the oldest field in continuous use in the United States. Matches are open to anyone on Sundays in season, and admission costs about what a coffee does. It is the least pretentious great thing in Aiken, and almost no visitor knows it is there.
Autumn and winter
Game days
There is no big-time college football here — the nearest stadium is an hour up the road in Columbia, and on those Saturdays we simply drive you. What is here is better company: Division II basketball at USC Aiken, a university women's polo team good enough to be read into the Congressional Record, and the Braves' single-A club playing across the county in a ballpark built in the shape of South Carolina.
September
Aiken's Makin'
The town's own festival takes over Park Avenue for a weekend each September and pulls twenty thousand people into a downtown you can cross on foot. It turns fifty this year. Come for it, and you will understand the place faster than any tour could manage.
Any week
No reason at all
A downtown you can walk end to end. Boulevards laid a hundred and fifty feet wide in 1834. Two thousand acres of forest you may enter only on foot or on a horse. Some people come for an event; the ones who come back come for this.
ACE is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Augusta National Golf Club or the Masters Tournament. We do not sell, source, or obtain tournament tickets or badges of any kind.
The Town
What we would do
with your week.
Not a directory. This is the short list — the places we would send our own people, and nothing we would not.
The ground itself
The things that are simply here, and free, and that most visitors never find.
- Hitchcock Woods
- Around 2,100 acres and some 70 miles of sand trails, open dawn to dusk, every day, at no charge — on foot or on horseback only. No bicycles, no engines. It is roughly two and a half times the size of Central Park and it starts a few streets from downtown.
- Hopelands Gardens
- Fourteen acres of the Iselin estate, given to the city and open to anyone, 10am until sunset, free. Live oaks, reflecting pools, a brick labyrinth, and a concert stage used through the warm months.
- Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame
- Inside Hopelands, and also free. It honours the champions conditioned on Aiken's sand — the reason the winter colony came south in the first place. Closed Mondays.
- The parkways
- The 1834 town plat laid boulevards 150 feet wide on a grid, and the planted medians survive as linear parks. It is why Aiken reads as an estate rather than a main street.
Where the horses are
Aiken's sand and mild winters made it a conditioning town. That never stopped.
- Whitney Field
- Polo since 1882; the oldest field in continuous use in the country. Public matches on Sundays through the spring and autumn seasons.
- Aiken Steeplechase Racecourse
- Sanctioned jump racing twice a year. The Spring meet opens the national steeplechase season; the Fall meet is set for Saturday 31 October 2026.
- The Aiken Horse Show in the Woods
- Founded in 1916 and held in a grass ring a mile inside Hitchcock Woods — the oldest horse show in the Carolinas. Walk in through any gate and it costs nothing.
- Aiken Training Track
- Chartered in 1941. The year after it opened, a colt trained on it won the Kentucky Derby. Forty of its alumni have been national champions.
The table
Every room here is one we would sit in ourselves. The list is short on purpose.
- The Restaurant at The Willcox
- The dining room of the 1898 hotel, which Travel + Leisure's 2026 readers placed fifth among all inns in the continental United States. Afternoon tea is served from three, by reservation.
- Malia's
- On Laurens Street, and past thirty years in business — which in a town this size is its own review. Lunch and dinner, Tuesday to Saturday.
- Park Avenue Oyster Bar & Grill
- Oysters, peel-and-eat shrimp, a steak if you want one. Weekend brunch. The room upstairs is the one to ask for.
- Neon Fig
- Seasonal cooking on Park Avenue. Brunch most of the week; dinner Thursday through Saturday. Closed Tuesdays.
- Whiskey Alley
- The whiskey bar, tucked in The Alley. Tapas late. Closed Mondays.
- Aiken County Farmers Market
- Organised in 1930 and still trading from the same spot — the oldest continuously operating county market in South Carolina. Saturday mornings, until it sells out.
Further out
An hour buys a great deal from here.
- Augusta, Georgia
- Twenty miles and about half an hour. The Riverwalk, and the Augusta Canal — a National Heritage Area you can see from a boat.
- Aiken State Park
- Sixteen miles east, on the South Fork of the Edisto. A 1.7-mile paddling trail, and boats to rent when you get there.
- Redcliffe Plantation
- Half an hour south at Beech Island. An 1859 house, and the preserved quarters of the people who were enslaved there. It is not a pretty afternoon, and it is worth the morning.
- The Aiken Golf Club
- A 1912 John Inglis course, open to visitors and walkable. (Palmetto, from 1892, is the other one — but it is private, and we will not pretend otherwise.)
The Residences
Step through the door
before you book it.
Every house is walked, photographed, and appointed by us before a guest ever sees it.
Historic winter-colony cottage
The Magnolia House
Columns, boxwood, and a porch built for long evenings.
Step inside
Restored brick carriage house
The Carriage House
Brick, ivy, and lantern light. Walkable to everything.
Step inside
Equestrian estate residence
The Paddock House
Wake to a raked ring and the pines behind it.
Step inside
The Week
Handled, end
to end.
- 01The House
- A residence chosen for the group you actually brought, appointed to a standard we set, and stocked before the door opens. Housekeeping daily. Turndown at dusk.
- 02The Table
- Dinner is decided before you land. The right room, the right hour, the right night of the week — held under our name, not yours.
- 03The Tee
- Tee times arranged and sequenced against the rest of your week, so the round you flew in for is not the round you rush.
- 04The Household
- A chef when you want the house to yourselves. A butler when you would rather not think about it. Neither, if that is the week you had in mind.
- 05The Ride
- A driver from the moment you land to the last round of the last night. Nobody in the party has to be the one who stays sober.
Enquire
Tell us who is
coming, and when.
Dates, the size of the party, and what the week is for — a round, a celebration, a first look at the town. We build it from there and send it back to you in full before a single thing is booked.