Officially known as “The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina,” the Citadel, founded in 1842, has a long and varied history.
Originally located in Marion Square (the Old Citadel building is now an Embassy Suites Hotel),
the campus is now located on about 300 acres on the banks of the Ashley River. Home to about 2300 undergraduates, who make up the Corp of Cadets, the Citadel offers 20 undergraduate majors and 37 graduate programs.
As a residential college, the Corp lives in barracks on campus. While you generally cannot go inside the eye-catching barracks (made famous in Pat Conroy’s “The Lords of Discipline“), you can get a peek of their well-known colorful checkerboard interiors.
Open to the public, it’s worth the short drive from downtown Charleston to see the beautiful buildings, watch the knobs (the nickname for the members of the freshman class) zipping their way around at high speed and in straight lines, and — if you time it right — attend a parade of the cadets in their finest uniforms. If you’re in Charleston in the fall, you can catch a football game and get to meet the Citadel’s mascot… the bulldog.
