🇺🇸 United States · East Coast
The Hamptons are the most glamorous beach destination on the East Coast of the United States: a run of elegant towns and villages at the eastern end of Long Island, where the New York elite have their summer houses. Imposing mansions behind perfectly clipped hedges, wide fine-sand beaches facing the Atlantic, charming towns, art galleries, fashionable restaurants and vineyards make up a landscape that is a byword for exclusivity and good living.
But beyond the luxury and the social scene that made them famous, the Hamptons also hold a rich history and genuine natural beauty. Towns such as Sag Harbor preserve their whaling past; Southampton and East Hampton, founded in the 17th century, are among the oldest English settlements in New York State; and Montauk, out at the tip, offers a wilder, surfier side, crowned by a historic lighthouse. It is a place where magazine glamour coexists with centuries-old windmills and farm fields.
This guide covers the essentials of the Hamptons with a practical, warm eye: which towns and beaches to visit, how to get there from New York, where to eat, which vineyards to see and how to enjoy the area without being a millionaire. Sophisticated but also natural, the Hamptons are a getaway of sea, mansions and charm a couple of hours from Manhattan.
The Hamptons area was originally inhabited by Algonquian peoples, mainly the Shinnecock and the Montaukett, who lived from fishing, hunting and gathering on the South Fork of Long Island, and whose names live on in many place names in the region (the Shinnecock Nation still holds a reservation near Southampton today). The first English settlers arrived in the mid-17th century: Southampton was founded in 1640 and East Hampton around 1648, which makes them some of the oldest English settlements in New York State. For centuries, the local economy revolved around farming, fishing and, in towns such as Sag Harbor, whaling, which in the 19th century made that port one of the most prosperous in the country. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the beauty of its beaches and its closeness to New York began to attract artists, writers and the city's wealthy families, who built large summer 'cottages'. Through the 20th century, the Hamptons became established as the seaside resort of the New York elite and as a focus of artistic life (many abstract expressionist painters, such as Jackson Pollock, lived and worked there). Today they combine their historic, rural character with the status of a world-famous luxury destination. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The 'Empire State': heart of the Iroquois Confederacy, a Dutch colony before it was an English one, the great gateway for millions of immigrants through Ellis Island, home to the largest city in the country and to natural wonders such as Niagara Falls.
Read the history of New York →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before the Hamptons were a byword for mansions and glamour, the South Fork of Long Island was inhabited by Algonquian-speaking peoples who lived off the wealth of the sea and the land. The main ones were the Shinnecock, in the area of present-day Southampton, and the Montaukett, towards the eastern end, around what is now Montauk. These peoples fished, hunted, gathered shellfish and farmed, and were expert makers of 'wampum', the seashell beads that carried great ceremonial and trading value among the peoples of the region.
The mark of these original inhabitants is everywhere in the geography of the Hamptons: many of the area's place names — including Montauk itself, Shinnecock, Amagansett and Peconic — derive from Indigenous languages. Unlike what happened with so many other Native peoples, the Shinnecock managed to maintain a continuous presence on their ancestral territory to this day: the Shinnecock Nation holds a reservation near Southampton and was federally recognised as a tribe in 2010, after a long struggle.
The arrival of English settlers in the mid-17th century radically transformed the life of these peoples, through trade, the ceding and loss of land, and diseases brought from Europe. Even so, the memory and culture of the Shinnecock and the Montaukett remain a living part of the East End's identity, asserted in museums and at the annual Shinnecock powwow, one of the best-attended Native events on the East Coast.
European colonisation of the East End of Long Island was the work of English settlers coming from New England, not of the Dutch who had founded New Amsterdam (the future New York) at the other end of the island. In 1640, a group of English settlers arriving from Massachusetts founded Southampton, considered the first English settlement in New York State. A few years later, around 1648, East Hampton was founded, also by settlers of English origin.
These towns were born as farming and fishing communities with a strong Puritan stamp, organised around the church and common land, in the New England style. During their first decades, in fact, they were more closely tied politically and culturally to the colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts than to Dutch New Amsterdam, until the whole area passed to English control. The settlers farmed the land, raised livestock, fished and, from the shore, hunted the whales that passed close to the coast.
That English colonial legacy is still very visible in today's Hamptons: the historic centres of Southampton, East Hampton and other towns preserve houses, churches, cemeteries, windmills and town ponds from the 17th and 18th centuries, perfectly kept, which give them that idyllic New England village air. Indeed, the name 'Hampton' derives from English towns, a reflection of where those first settlers came from.
During the 19th century, while most East End towns remained quiet farming and fishing communities, one of them enjoyed a spectacular boom thanks to an industry that then moved fortunes: whaling. That town was Sag Harbor, which because of its excellent natural harbour on the bay became one of the most important and prosperous whaling ports on the entire east coast of the United States.
From Sag Harbor whaling ships set out on long expeditions lasting years across the world's oceans, in search of the whale oil that, in that age before petroleum, was essential for lighting and lubrication. The industry drew wealth, sailors from all over the world and a cosmopolitan, bustling life to the town. The captains and shipowners who grew rich from whaling built elegant mansions, many in Greek Revival style, which survive today and give Sag Harbor its distinctive historic character.
The whaling boom declined towards the middle and end of the 19th century, when overexploitation, shipwrecks and, above all, the appearance of petroleum (which replaced whale oil) sank the industry. Sag Harbor lost its commercial vigour but kept its architectural heritage intact, which allowed it to reinvent itself later as a town of great historic charm. The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, in an imposing period mansion, keeps alive the memory of that heroic and harsh era.
The transformation of the Hamptons into the elite's seaside resort began in the late 19th century, when the beauty of their beaches, their summer climate and their relative closeness to New York City started to attract wealthy holidaymakers. The arrival of the railway made access easier, and prosperous New York families began to build large summer houses (the so-called 'summer cottages', which had little of the cottage about them) along the coast, especially in Southampton and East Hampton.
But the Hamptons did not attract only high society: almost from the start they also became a magnet for artists, writers and intellectuals, seduced by the quality of the light, the landscapes of dunes and fields, and the quiet. Painters settled in the area as early as the late 19th century, and East Hampton in particular developed an early artists' colony. This double identity — social elite destination and creative refuge — would mark the character of the Hamptons for ever.
By the early 20th century, the towns of the East End already had a clear summer season that transformed their population and their economy. Although out of season they were still rural and fishing communities, in the warm months they filled with wealthy holidaymakers, parties, yacht clubs and social life. The foundations were thus laid for what would become the modern Hamptons: a place where luxury, art and nature would coexist in a unique balance.
In the mid-20th century, the Hamptons — and especially the East Hampton and Springs area — lived through one of the most fascinating chapters in their history: they became a genuine capital of American avant-garde art, the epicentre of the abstract expressionist movement that put New York at the head of the art world.
The central figure in this phenomenon was the painter Jackson Pollock, who together with his wife, the painter Lee Krasner, moved to a farmhouse in Springs, near East Hampton, in 1945. Drawn by the quiet, the light and the then-affordable prices of the area, it was in that rural setting that Pollock developed his revolutionary 'dripping' technique, creating some of the most influential works of the 20th century. His presence drew other artists: Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and many more set up houses and studios in the area, forming a vibrant creative community that mixed work, bohemian life and long conversations.
That concentration of talent left a deep mark on the cultural identity of the Hamptons, which became established as a place associated with first-rate art. Today that legacy is preserved in places such as the Pollock-Krasner House (the house-studio turned museum, where the paint splatters can still be seen on the studio floor) and the Parrish Art Museum, as well as in the area's numerous galleries. That era when the Hamptons were the workshop of the geniuses of American art remains a source of pride and a cultural draw of the first order.
Through the second half of the 20th century and up to today, the Hamptons became established as one of the most exclusive and famous summer destinations in the world, the seaside resort par excellence of the New York elite and, by extension, of much of the American and international elite. Their closeness to Manhattan, the beauty of the beaches and towns, and the concentration of wealth turned the area into a byword for luxury, status and high-end social life.
Property prices shot up to astronomical figures: the oceanfront mansions of Southampton, East Hampton or Sagaponack are among the most expensive properties in the United States. The Hamptons summer filled with charity parties, exclusive events, fashionable restaurants, luxury brand shops and the regular presence of celebrities from film, music, finance and politics. Popular culture — films, series, magazines — cemented the glamorous image of the area as the place where 'everyone who matters' spends the summer.
All the same, out of season and beneath the layer of glamour, the Hamptons remain a region with a deep history and a genuine identity: preserved colonial towns, a living farming and fishing tradition, vineyards, historic lighthouses such as the one at Montauk, the presence of the Shinnecock Nation and a notable artistic heritage. That tension between contemporary luxury and historic, natural character is precisely what makes the Hamptons such a singular destination: a place where billionaires' mansions coexist with centuries-old windmills and dunes swept by the Atlantic wind.