Like other East Neuk villages, it is rich in vernacular fisher and merchant houses of the 17th to early 19th centuries, with characteristic old Scots features such as forestairs, crow-stepped gables, datestones and pantiled roofs.

Its historic buildings include a now defunct windmill that once powered a salt panning industry, and a 14th-century church that sits on the rocks above the water on the western side.

Approximately 1⁄2 mile (800 metres) west of St Monans are the remains of Newark Castle, a 16th-century manor that has since fallen to ruin through cliff erosion and disrepair.

[4] According to author Leonard Low, an account written for Mary Queen of Scots indicates that in 1548 a significant battle occurred a short distance from St Monans church.

[6] The west pier was created in 1902 by their nephew Charles Alexander Stevenson who also deepened the harbour to take larger vessels.

[8] St Monans Church dates from 1369[9] and is situated in an isolated position to the west of the village on the very edge of the sea.

[10] Standing at the extreme west end of this the ruin of an earlier church can be viewed across fields, again perched on the sea edge.

The church, one of the finest remaining from the Middle Ages in Scotland, was built by King David II Bruce (1329–71), initially for a small house of Dominican friars.

[14] The Hall was built in 1970 and is a modern building, harled with a slate roof, situated in a raised location facing broadly west over Hope Park on the northern edge of St. Monans.

There is also a caravan park which attracts many visitors, a tradition that has continued from when the village was on the East Neuk Rail Line, part of the Fife Coast Railway which was shut down in the 1960s after the Beeching cuts.