Known for
Revolutionary War history along the Freedom Trail
Must-see landmarks
Boston Common, Faneuil Hall, the Freedom Trail and Fenway Park
Best time to visit
Late spring to early autumn, from May to October
Days needed
2 to 3 days for the Freedom Trail sights and a museum or two
Boston's Public Garden, which the city calls America's first public botanical garden, opened in 1837; its lagoon centres on an equestrian statue of George Washington. The seasonal Swan Boats, run by the same family for over a century, paddle the lagoon from April to September. Boston Common is a 5 minute walk across Charles Street.
The National Park Service calls Boston Common the oldest public park in the United States, established in 1634 when the town taxed households six shillings to buy the farm of William Blackstone for shared grazing and militia musters; the park covers 50 acres today. The Massachusetts State House stands at its northeast corner, a short walk away.
Charles Bulfinch designed this Federal style capitol, completed in 1798 for the young Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Paul Revere and Sons sheathed its dome in copper in 1802, later first gilded in gold in 1874. Free guided tours of the interior, about 40 minutes long, run on weekdays. Granary Burying Ground is a short walk uphill.
Laid out in 1660 as Boston's third burial ground, this cemetery holds the graves of Declaration signers Samuel Adams and John Hancock, of Paul Revere, and of the five victims of the Boston Massacre including Crispus Attucks. It opens daily from about 9:00 to 16:00. The Old State House is a 10 minute walk east.
Built in 1713 as the seat of colonial government, the Old State House stood witness to the Boston Massacre on its doorstep in 1770 and let the Declaration of Independence be read from its balcony. Revolutionary Spaces opens the museum daily from 10:00 to 18:00. Faneuil Hall is a 5 minute walk away.
Merchant Peter Faneuil gave this 1741 hall to the town as a market and meeting space, earning it the nickname Cradle of Liberty; the National Park Service keeps its upstairs Great Hall free to step inside. Quincy Market's food stalls trade in the long granite building right behind it. The Paul Revere House is an 8 minute walk into the North End.
Built around 1680, this is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston and the only Freedom Trail site that is a home, once belonging to the silversmith who rode north to warn that British troops were on the march. Old North Church is a 6 minute walk away.
Boston's oldest standing church, built in 1723, held the two lanterns that signalled Paul Revere's ride: 'one if by land, two if by sea'. The sanctuary opens Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00 and Sunday from 11:30 to 17:00. USS Constitution is a 21 minute walk away, across the bridge into Charlestown.
USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy, welcomes visitors aboard at no charge; a security checkpoint requires photo ID from everyone aged 18 and over before crossing the gangway. The nonprofit museum next door interprets her history in more depth.
A line of red brick and red paint runs 2.5 miles across Boston and ties together 16 historic sites, from the lawns of Boston Common to the Charlestown Navy Yard and the Bunker Hill Monument. It gathers meeting houses, burying grounds, churches, a commissioned warship and the North End's narrow streets into a single walk that most visitors spread over a day. The route dates to 1951, when a Boston journalist proposed marking a path between the places where the American Revolution took shape.
Location: Boston Common to Charlestown, following the red line
Access: Free to walk at any hour, although the individual sites set their own admission
The Boston Red Sox have played here since 1912, which makes Fenway Park the oldest ballpark still in use in Major League Baseball and, in the league's own words, America's Most Beloved Ballpark. The left field wall known as the Green Monster stands 37 feet 2 inches high and swallows what would be home runs anywhere else. Guided tours run year round and leave at the top of each hour, and on game days the last one departs three hours before the first pitch.
Location: Fenway-Kenmore, west of downtown Boston
Access: Ticketed tours, 9:00 to 17:00 from April to October and 10:00 to 17:00 in winter
The city's great art museum moved to Huntington Avenue in 1909, into a Beaux-Arts building by Guy Lowell with a 500 foot facade and a rotunda that John Singer Sargent decorated with murals in his last years. Nearly half a million works cover most of the history of art: one of the finest collections of Japanese art outside Japan, Egyptian sculpture from the museum's own digs at Giza, French Impressionists with dozens of Monets, and the Art of the Americas Wing opened in 2010 by Foster and Partners around a glass courtyard, with Copley, Sargent and the silver of Paul Revere.
Architect: Guy Lowell; Art of the Americas Wing by Foster and Partners · Opened: 1909 on this site, founded 1870
Location: 465 Huntington Avenue, Fenway
Access: Ticketed
The oldest public park in the United States started in 1634 as shared ground for grazing cattle and drilling militia, and its 50 acres have carried the city's public life ever since: British redcoats camped here from 1768, the 1860s brought Civil War recruiting and anti-slavery meetings, and Pope John Paul II said Mass on the grass in 1979. The Frog Pond draws skaters in winter and children through its spray pool in summer.
Location: Bounded by Tremont, Park, Beacon, Charles and Boylston Streets
Access: Free and open at any hour, with park information from the city parks department
Two centuries after the Common was set aside for cattle, the city opened the first public botanical garden in America here in 1837, and the contrast still shows: meandering paths, a lagoon crossed by a small suspension bridge and beds of showy Victorian planting. George Meacham won the public competition to design it. The swan boats have been pedalled across the lagoon by the same family since 1877 and run daily from April to September.
Designer: George Meacham
Location: Between Charles, Beacon, Arlington and Boylston Streets
Access: Free to wander; only the swan boat ride is ticketed. Garden information
Charles Bulfinch designed the Commonwealth's capitol in the Federal style and it was finished in 1798 at the crest of Beacon Hill, looking down on the northeast corner of Boston Common. Paul Revere and Sons sheathed the dome in copper in 1802 and it was first gilded in gold in 1874, which is why it reads as a bright dot above the rooftops from half the city. The building is still the working seat of the Massachusetts legislature.
Architect: Charles Bulfinch · Style: Federal architecture
Location: Beacon Hill, at the northeast corner of Boston Common
Access: Free to enter, with free guided tours of the interior on weekdays that last about 40 minutes
The merchant Peter Faneuil gave the town a market and a meeting hall, and Bostonians have been arguing in it ever since, which is how it came to be called the Cradle of Liberty. Revolutionary protest was only the start: abolitionists, suffragists and labour organisers all held their meetings under the same roof. The Great Hall occupies the second floor above the market level, where a National Park Service visitor centre now sits, and rangers give short free talks about the building from Wednesday to Sunday.
Style: Georgian architecture
Location: 1 Faneuil Hall Square, Boston
Access: Free on every floor, though the Great Hall closes on Mondays and whenever the city has an event booked, so check the park's Faneuil Hall page
The oldest building in downtown Boston stands on North Square in the North End, a wooden house built around 1680 where the silversmith Paul Revere and his family lived for roughly twenty years, through the Revolution and the night he rode out to warn Lexington and Concord. It is the only site on the Freedom Trail that is a home rather than a church, a burying ground or a public building, and the rooms read as the modest quarters of an artisan family.
Location: 19 North Square, Boston
Access: Ticketed, with tickets sold at the admissions booth on arrival; open daily 10:00 to 17:15 from mid April to the end of October
Boston's oldest standing church went up on Salem Street in 1723, and on the night of 18 April 1775 Robert Newman and John Pulling climbed its tower and briefly hung two lanterns by the windows. Sent from the tallest structure in town, the signal warned that British troops were crossing the Charles River. The congregation still worships here as Christ Church while a secular nonprofit runs the visits, which cover the sanctuary and the crypt, with the bell ringing chamber on a separate guided tour.
Style: Georgian architecture
Location: 193 Salem Street, Boston
Access: Ticketed, with a later opening on Sundays
Built in Boston and launched in 1797, USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy, and officers and crew still serve aboard her. She earned the name Old Ironsides during the War of 1812. Visitors cross the gangway to walk her decks, the ship's gun sounds every morning at eight and again at sunset, and the museum across the pier tells the rest of the story and asks for a donation rather than an entrance fee.
Location: Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston
Access: Free, after a security screening that asks visitors aged 18 and over for a federal or state photo ID; open Wednesday to Sunday in summer, see the ship's park page
A granite obelisk 221 feet tall marks Breed's Hill, where New England soldiers faced the British army in a pitched battle on 17 June 1775 and left around a thousand of some 2,400 redcoats dead or wounded before giving up the ground. The Marquis de Lafayette laid the cornerstone fifty years after the fight, the work took more than seventeen years, and the monument was dedicated in 1843. Reaching the top means 294 steps up a tight spiral stair.
Location: Monument Square, Charlestown
Access: Free, Wednesday to Sunday, with 25 people allowed inside at a time and the last climb half an hour before closing. Operating hours
Boston Red Sox vs Los Angeles Angels: Red Sox Football Jersey comes to Fenway Park on 7 September at 13:35.
Elevation Rhythm - Washed Tour plays Citizens House of Blues Boston on 8 September at 18:00.
Boston Red Sox vs. Los Angeles Angels comes to Fenway Park on 8 September at 18:45.
John Fogerty and Steve Winwood plays Leader Bank Pavilion on 8 September at 19:30.
Laura Ramoso: The Calm Down Tour plays The Wilbur on 9 September at 19:30.
Maria Bamford plays The Wilbur on 12 September at 19:00.
This colonial-era cemetery near the State House opens free to the public daily from about 9:00 to 16:00, with no ticket or reservation needed to wander among its 18th century headstones.
The otherwise ticketed Gardner Museum opens free to everyone every Thursday from 17:00 to 21:00, when the Venetian-style courtyard and the empty frames left by the 1990 theft can be seen at no cost.
The ICA's waterfront galleries in the Seaport are free every Thursday from 17:00 to 21:00, and free at all times for visitors 18 and under; general admission applies the rest of the week.
Beacon Hill's gas-lit, cobblestoned lanes, including tiny Acorn Street, cost nothing to wander, and neither does admiring the bowfront brick rowhouses along Mount Vernon and Chestnut Streets.
This run of free public parks and gardens follows the old Central Artery from Chinatown to the North End; strolling past its fountains and public art costs nothing, though the carousel and food trucks charge for what they sell.
Boston's Harborwalk links waterfront parks, piers and viewpoints around the harbour at no charge, opening up stretches of shoreline that were once working industrial waterfront.
Boston grew from a cramped colonial peninsula into the capital of Massachusetts, and its compact core still reads like a walkable Revolutionary War museum: cobblestoned lanes, a 2.5 mile trail of red brick, and a harbour where colonists once tipped tea overboard in protest. Dozens of college campuses keep the city young, while its brownstones and steepled churches keep it looking two centuries old.
Beacon Hill's gas-lit streets and the Back Bay's Victorian brownstones frame the Public Garden and Boston Common on the city's western side. The North End holds the Freedom Trail's final downtown stops among a dense strip of Italian restaurants. Across the water, Charlestown keeps USS Constitution and the Bunker Hill Monument, while South Boston's Seaport district has grown up around the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Late spring through early autumn brings the mildest weather and the fullest calendar of outdoor events, though summer humidity can build by August. Two to three days cover the Freedom Trail sights and a museum or two; a third or fourth day allows time for Cambridge, across the Charles River and home to Harvard University and MIT.
The MBTA subway, known locally as the T, and its bus network reach most neighbourhoods, while the compact downtown core rewards walking between Freedom Trail stops. The Silver Line bus runs free from Logan Airport to South Station. Cambridge sits a short ride across the Charles River, and the Massachusetts coast opens up further day trips by regional rail. New England seafood and the colonial streets that the red-brick trail strings together give the city its place among the places to see in the United States.