The two-headed kingdom of Camelot: A stroll through the Kennedy family fiefdom on Cape Cod

Beyond the territory of the epic, the kingdom of Camelot has a real setting: the hook-shaped peninsula of Cape Cod (Massachusetts). And an epicenter: the port of Hyannis, where everything seems devoted to the Kennedys, starting with the museum of the same name and the Kennedy Legacy Trail, which threads through the town of 12,800 inhabitants, marking those places linked to the history of the family, which is also the history of the United States: monuments, the Catholic church they attended, statues, and piers.

Hyannis, a town as sleepy as it is secluded, with its colorful houses and neat flowerbeds dotting the sidewalks, is a map of sailboats and afternoon strolling, but it is not only a summer destination: it is, above all, the fiefdom of the only dynasty that has ever existed in the United States. In front of the family residence, built by patriarch Joe and his wife, Rose, in the bend of a nearby beach, the Stars and Stripes flag still flies as a challenge to the curse that has haunted the family name since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, in 1963, and the death of his son John, 25 years ago, in a plane crash on the nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard. In theory it is impossible to visit it, or even get close to it — it has been a national monument since the 1970s — but a walk along the beach allows one to appreciate its powerful presence: like a scale model of the White House, among dunes and seagulls, is the place where the first Catholic president of the United States addressed the nation in November 1960.

Unlike the Kennedy mansion, the rest of Hyannis can be visited, but it’s best to do so in the off-season when it wakes up from the din of tourism. Hyannis is the port from which ferries depart to Nantucket, with its charming downtown and its whaling museum, and to Martha’s Vineyard, the island where Jackie Kennedy built her own summer home and to which the plane piloted by John was headed when it crashed in the Atlantic with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister on board. From the ferry that links the peninsula and the islands, barely an hour’s crossing, a landscape of dunes and lighthouses represents the quintessence of summer.

The glamour that comes with the surname is revived today in John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, 31, whom everyone calls Jack, like his grandfather; Caroline Kennedy’s youngest son and nephew of the late John, whom he vividly resembles, is square-jawed, lanky, an athlete, lawyer and brilliant commentator. Jack Schlossberg — who often uses his father’s surname — a self-confessed Democrat so as not to lose the family tradition, is currently serving as a loudspeaker for Kamala Harris’s candidacy (in 2020 he did so for Joe Biden) and, above all, he is debunking the almost libertarian political proposals of his great-uncle, Robert J. Kennedy, an independent candidate — he was registered as a Democrat until October 2023 — for the presidency of the United States.

Jack is a scourge of the son of the also-assassinated senator Bobby Kennedy, whom he accuses of encouraging misinformation and spreading conspiracy theories about Covid and vaccines. The rest of the clan has also repudiated his ideas, but the telegenic Jack does so with more pull, with more grace. The dauphin, the new Kennedy prince, who is approaching the age his uncle was when he died, is the green shoot of the family, although his life is in New York and only occasionally, for some poignant anniversary — in the Kennedy family, most are — does he show up in Cape Cod.

In Hyannis, it is not difficult to find souvenirs featuring Kennedy family members — photos in stores or at the sailing school — but there also numerous electoral posters featuring the disgraced candidate, too many even for his low level of electoral support (he is polling at barely 5% nationwide), although the adhesion is understandable: after all, the history of the town is inseparable from the surname, however odd the aspirant to the White House may be (he recently confessed that he disposed of the carcass of a bear cub in Central Park 10 years ago). In contrast to Bobby Jr.’s brash profile, the patrician imprint of the Kennedys encourages the figure of the heir to Camelot, the name given to his grandfather’s White House because of the mixture of power, magic, and youth that he radiated. Jack Schlossberg Kennedy is the reincarnation of the myth.

The seasonal epicenter of America’s great fortunes — the old money, not the nouveau riche of Wall Street or Silicon Valley — Cape Cod is as discreet as it is moribund: Although Provincetown at the northern tip of the peninsula attracts thousands of tourists every June to celebrate Pride, Hyannis is a sure bet, with its harbor-side promenades and miles of beaches, its rows of leafy hydrangeas, the best clam chowder in the country — nothing like New York’s fudged and atomized recipe — and, as an extreme sport, trips to the ice cream parlor, at $12 for a two-scoop cone.

It is also the base of operations for going to the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, also imprinted in the Kennedy legend. Nantucket looks like a toy, with its red-brick houses, charming center and countless white-wood and paisley-print boutiques shaded by sycamore trees and giant oleanders. The craggy Martha’s Vineyard, with its crews of Hispanic gardeners combing the lawns of the mansions, is so exclusive that some villas do not need an access road, only a heliport, as their owners fly directly from Manhattan or Washington (the Clintons and the Obamas, for example, have residences there). Colorful lighthouses and wooden walkways over the dunes mark the coastline, wherever the houses have not fenced off their plot of beach, leaving the walker like a crane, not knowing where to put their feet.

Martha’s Vineyard served as a set for several scenes in Jaws. It also embodies the darker side of the Kennedys. In addition to John’s untimely death, it was the scene in July 1969 of a murky event involving another family member in Chappaquiddick, on the eastern end of the island: after a night of partying, in a thick fog like the one that swallowed John, Senator Ted Kennedy’s car crashed into a bridge, although he lived to tell the tale. His young companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned, as did Ted’s political career: he abandoned his plans to run for the presidency in 1972 and 1976. Power and death could be the family motto. Who knows if one day, after Robert Jr’s bid to reach the White House, the brilliant Jack will conjure up the family magic and resurrect Camelot.

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