At the historic crossroads of a 17th-century village, Tiverton Four Corners (www.tivertonfourcorners.com) is a cutesy collection of restored houses and mercantile buildings, many now housing shops and art galleries.

Nearby, the 1788 Gray’s Store (4 Main St., Adamsville, 401/635-4566, 6:30 a.m.–8 p.m. daily) is reputedly the oldest continuously operating store in America. It retains the original soda fountain and penny candy case, along with a mini-museum of historical ephemera.

Further down the peninsula, the Little Compton Commons is as idyllic a town green as you are ever likely to find, with a Congregational church, general store, and library fronting an old graveyard and green space. If you can withstand more quaint scenery, at the far end of the peninsula on Sakonnet Point is a collection of pleasingly ramshackle fishing villages with a strand of sandy beach.

Some 600 yards offshore on an iron pier, Sakonnet Point Light (www.lighthouse.cc/sakonnet) is a majestic 66-foot-tall cylindrical tower still lit at night.