12 Reasons to Travel to Boston This Year

We’ll say it: In its nearly 400-year history, there’s never been a better time to visit Boston for its incredible public spaces and exciting new restaurants. Massachusetts’ capital will also host seven FIFA World Cup matches in June and July, including a quarterfinal. And in a deep nod to its place in Revolutionary War history, July brings a citywide birthday bash to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s independence—including the firework-filled Boston Harborfest (July 2–4) and a visiting fleet of enormous tall ships (July 11–16). Consider this your guide.

Go Green

The Rose Kennedy Greenway opened in 2008 after planners decided to push Boston traffic underground, an idea that became known as the Big Dig—an ambitious project and for years, a national joke. The effort paid off: With the space, the city created a 17-acre park that connects the neighborhoods of Chinatown, the Financial District, the Wharf District, and North End.

Chris Cook, Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy’s executive director, says that the project nods to one of Boston’s 19th-century plans: landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s idea of an “Emerald Necklace” connecting Boston’s parks and waterways, and ultimately, the city’s people.

For a food- and arts-focused walk, spend a few hours on the Greenway; start in Chinatown and end downtown. In 2025, the Greenway Food Truck Program had 22 vendors, with 16 identifying as female-, BIPOC-, or LGBTQ-owned businesses. For art of epic proportions, don’t miss Jeffrey Gibson’s mural, your spirit whispering in my ear, which towers near Dewey Square and is the first painting created on the Greenway by an Indigenous artist. (It is on view until April 2026.)

3 Other Spots to Touch Grass

Boston Common, the oldest park in the United States, was created in 1634. Experience it as part of the 2.5-mile Freedom Trail, which connects 16 historic sites across the city.

Adjacent to the Common, the Public Garden opened in 1837 as the first public botanical garden in the country. It brims with plants, fountains, and statues, and is home to a scenic lagoon.

Kelleher Rose Garden is a picturesque space in the Back Bay Fens parkland. The English-style garden contains more than 1,500 roses behind tall green hedges.

Where to Eat Some of the City’s Most Memorable Meals

Founded in 2023 by Ghanaian American Nyacko Pearl Perry and Nepal-born Biplaw Rai, Dorchester’s Comfort Kitchen is a celebration of African and Asian diaspora cuisine and their connection to the Americas. Okra, a vegetable introduced to the Americas via the slave trade, is here seared in brown butter and paired with a generous swipe of masala-spiced yogurt and crunchy plantain bits. The menu spans centuries and regions, and, if you read it closely, different types of Americas.

At Mooncusser in the Back Bay, Top Chef alum Carl Dooley dials up the elegance of a New England fish house with a $125 tasting menu that celebrates local seafood: Think swordfish confit with Sungold tomato and lobster soup with tamarind.

If it’s Italian you want, Marian Klausner, owner of North End gift shop Shake the Tree, describes Parziale’s Bakery in the same neighborhood as the “best-kept secret” for amazing pizza.

Opened in September 2025 in Boston’s Seaport district by owner Kevin Liu, the French-Japanese spot Mai exudes an unfussy cool: wagyu beef comes with a side of frites, caviar tops chicken tempura, and foie gras fills a duck confit handroll. All of it is served in a beautifully designed space with wood beams, green and gold wallpaper, lavender lighting, and a glassed-in kitchen. Mai does not take reservations, so go early—or be prepared to wait.

One Great Block

In the Back Bay neighborhood, tried and true Newbury Street is a mile-long road lined with brownstone buildings, high-end retailers, and independent boutiques like Milk Money. (OK, more like eight great blocks.) Be sure to check out Trident Booksellers & Café for giant, cheddar cheese–stuffed tater tots, and stop in Pucker Gallery and Sitka Home Art Gallery, run by Türkiye-born artist Sitka Gulergun.

Where to Stay in Boston

Raffles Boston opened in 2023 as the Raffles hotel brand’s first U.S. outpost. It offers a luxurious stay in the heart of tony Back Bay, with 147 butler-serviced rooms and suites and a Guerlain Spa that includes a 20-meter indoor pool and a sauna.

In the Financial District, the elegant Langham, Boston is housed in a century-old building that spent its first 55 years as the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; it still has the original brass Federal Reserve seal embedded in its terrazzo floor. Its 312 guest rooms, renovated in 2021, are meant to evoke the shores of New England, and its 1920s-style bar, the Fed, has a vault of rare spirits from around the world.

The 65-room Whitney Hotel started out in 1908 as housing for nurses who worked at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Each stay includes a key for discounts at several nearby shops, bars, and restaurants. Borrow one of the hotel’s complimentary bicycles to visit the Massachusetts State House and Museum of African American History, just a half-mile away.

Boston-Isabella-Stewart-Gardner-Museum-Malakhai-Pearson.jpg — Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

A Day at the Museum

Inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, visitors will find the predictable Rembrandts and Manets. But Gardner, a Gilded Age heiress who opened the museum in 1903, also collected works by contemporaries such as John Singer Sargent and Rosa Bonheur, plus Islamic art and marble Greek sculpture. This mix portended a new America that was already underway: a diversity of ideas and aesthetics, and, eventually, people. In 1990, two thieves stole several well-known works, including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer, and the museum is still searching for the missing paintings (look for the empty frames on the walls).

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) was originally founded in the 1930s and moved to its current Seaport location in 2006. In addition to wandering amid rotating exhibits from established and emerging contemporary artists, enjoy the view of the harbor through the building’s huge windows. In the summer, visitors can catch a boat to the ICA Watershed in East Boston, where past exhibits have displayed work from artists including Hew Locke and Guadalupe Maravilla, whose transdisciplinary practice centers Indigenous traditions.

Pay Your Respects

Granary Burying Ground, established in 1660, is where some of the city’s most famous have been laid to rest: John Hancock and Samuel Adams, both signers of the Declaration of Independence, and Paul Revere, best known for his midnight ride (memorialized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) on April 18, 1775, to warn colonists that the British were coming.

Consider the past a little differently with…

Everyone250, a collection of more than 100 organizations and people highlighting the diverse perspectives that have shaped Boston.

Queer History Boston, a nonprofit that dates to 1980 and hosts a popular LGBTQ history walking tour of the Boston Common and Public Gardens.

Revolution 250, which promotes heritage tourism and commemorates landmark events.

In the Neighborhood(s)

Boston has 23 distinct neighborhoods. Dorchester, one of the farthest south, is its largest at more than six square miles. Visit SoWa (South of Washington) in the South End for artist open studios at 450 Harrison Avenue; Seaport for a strollable waterfront; Beacon Hill for historic homes and antique stores; and Chinatown for bakeries and boba tea shops. It is the only historically Chinese neighborhood in New England.

Listen Up

At the lively Grace by Nia, Boston’s first Black woman–owned supper club, live music accompanies dishes such as fried chicken and biscuits or oxtail and grits.

Built in 1900, Symphony Hall is a National Historic Landmark where audiences can enjoy performances by two orchestras—the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops—along with other concerts and events.

Legendary venue Wally’s Café Jazz Club has been around since 1947, and in the years since, has hosted performances by the likes of Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Plus: Musician Matt Bowker’s 90-minute Soundscape walking tour of the Back Bay and Fenway neighborhoods includes stops at record stores, jazz clubs, and dive bars.

Follow Another Famous Trail

In the past four centuries, Greater Boston has birthed its fair share of discoveries in science, technology, and medicine, highlighted on the 21-stop Innovation Trail. Use its map to take a self-guided tour of Boston and Cambridge, from MIT labs to the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital, or join one of its expert-guided walking tours or scavenger hunts.

Take Me to Church

Old North (Boston’s oldest church building) and Trinity (with its American Romanesque style) may get more foot traffic, but don’t miss the massive Cathedral of the Holy Cross, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and seemingly designed to awe: Think soaring ceilings, stained glass windows of biblical characters, and majestic arches like there was a fire sale on majestic arches. It was built in 1875, and in January 1964, John F. Kennedy’s memorial mass was held here after his assassination on November 22, 1963.

Additional reporting by Laura Dannen Redman and Bailey Berg

Negin Farsad

Negin Farsad is a New York–based writer, director, and social-justice comedian known for blending humor and activism to explore race, politics, and culture through film, writing, and podcasting.