Top Attractions in Boston
A guide to Boston's best museums, parks, and historic sights, along with detours to highlights nearby including, of course, Cambridge, but also the islands in Boston Harbor, Concord & Lexington, and Salem.
1 Science Park, Boston, MA 02114, USA
Home to some 35 colleges and universities, Boston is a wicked-smaht city, and you’ll feel like a genius if you take your kids to the always entertaining Boston Museum of Science. For sheer thrills, nothing beats the museum’s Van de...
25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas, where art thou? That’s a question the staff has been asking at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum since 1990, when thieves made off with 13 of the museum’s most valuable pieces, worth an estimated half a...
4 Yawkey Way, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Nothing defines Boston quite as much as the town’s devotion to sports (10 championships since the turn of the century doesn’t hurt), and with all due respect to the five-time-Super-Bowl-champion Patriots, it’s Fenway Park, not...
4 Charles St, Boston, MA 02116, USA
Boston is often described as a big town masquerading as a small city, and the Boston Public Garden is one of the city’s most human-scaled spaces. Established in 1836 as the first public botanical garden in the United States, the Boston...
139 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02111, USA
The Common becomes extraordinary on winter evenings when the Christmas tree is up and soft lights seem to hold back the twilight chill, but the truth is there’s no bad time to visit the nation’s oldest public park. The former cow...
193 Salem St, Boston, MA 02113, USA
Like Sean Bean in National Treasure, you won’t find the booty of the Knights Templar in the basement of the Old North Church, but there is a crypt here with thousands of bodies dating back to the 18th century. This prominent stop on the...
19 N Square, Boston, MA 02113, USA
Silversmith Paul Revere was prosperous before he was famous, as evidenced by his fine home in Boston’s North End. Most of this North Square house, built in 1680 and restored to its colonial appearance in the 20th century, is original to the...
Building 22, Charlestown Navy Yard, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA
"Old Ironsides" is the oldest commissioned warship in the world, a restored frigate that is still crewed by Navy officers and sailors and is capable of sailing under its own power more than 220 years after it was built. Most times, however, the...
Hull, MA 02045, USA
The past two decades have seen the dozens of islands scattered across Boston Harbor transformed from barely noticed dots on the horizon to one of the city’s most popular attractions. The Boston Harbor Island National Recreation Area,...
308 Congress St, Boston, MA 02210, USA
The Boston Children’s Museum knows a thing or two about keeping kids amused and entertained—it's been doing it for more than a century. An unmissable landmark on Fort Point Channel (look for the giant Hood milk bottle), the museum has...
4 S Market St, Boston, MA 02109, USA
306 Northern Ave, Boston, MA 02210, USA
Located in South Boston, the Harpoon Brewery ticks all the boxes on the beer lover’s wish list. There's a detailed, unhurried tour of a working brewing operation and the chance to sample nearly the entire line of Harpoon’s beers (well,...
306 Congress St, Boston, MA 02210, USA
Tossing tea into Boston Harbor sounds pretty quaint by modern protest standards, but it was no joke back in 1773, when the tiny little leaves dumped by Boston patriots were worth more than $1.7 million in today’s dollars. That stirring act...
1 Central Wharf, Boston, MA 02110, USA
A Caribbean coral reef in Boston? You’ll find it at the New England Aquarium, as part of the aptly named Giant Ocean Tank, which contains 200,000 gallons of water and is swimming with sharks, sea turtles, barracuda, and hundreds of other...
217 Jamaicaway, Boston, MA 02130, USA
Baseball had nothing to do with the naming of Fenway Park: The stadium gets its moniker from the nearby Back Bay Fens, a stretch of saltwater marsh in the heart of Boston that was landscaped into a park by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Fens are among...
Mile-long Newbury Street, lined with handsome 19th-century brownstone homes, is synonymous with shopping in Boston; it's also the place to go to get your hair done up nice. Between Arlington Street and Massachusetts Avenue you’ll find an...
25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA 02210, USA
A waterfront icon in the spirit of Sydney’s Opera House, the South Boston home of the Institute of Contemporary Art showcases the work of artists like Shepard Fairey, Tara Donovan, and Nan Goldin wrapped in glass and steel and bathed in...
1 Central Wharf, Boston, MA 02110, USA
Boston’s famous duck boats seem to get almost as much parade duty as time on the water: “The City of Champions” rolls them out every time the Pats, Sox, Celts, or Bruins win a title, but you don’t need a gaudy ring or...
50, 800 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02199, USA
Columbia Point, Boston, MA 02125, USA
The assassination of Boston’s favorite son is burned into the memory of most Americans who lived through that tragic moment in history, but the JFK Presidential Library and Museum is a celebration of John F. Kennedy’s life, not his...
465 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is a work of art itself: a grand neoclassical landmark built in 1909 and decorated with frescoes painted by John Singer Sargent, wed to an I.M. Pei–designed wing added in 1981. Inside, you’ll find one...
30 Germania St, Boston, MA 02130, USA
When Samuel Adams wasn’t busy organizing the Boston Tea Party, signing the Declaration of Independence, and generally doing founding-father stuff, he worked in the family business producing malt for beer. Today, his likeness may not grace...
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, Boston, MA 02109, USA
Who wouldn’t trade an ugly elevated highway for a ribbon of new parkland? Boston’s famous Big Dig dismantled the eyesore John F. Kennedy Expressway that long separated downtown from its waterfront and turned most of its former route...
139 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02118, USA
The Freedom Trail is the artery connecting most of Boston’s key Revolutionary War sites, from Boston Common to the USS Constitution—16 stops in all. Besides providing you with some history, following the red stripe around town also...
26 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
In addition to being the nation’s most prestigious university, Harvard operates more than a dozen museums, from the unusual (the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments) to the intriguing (the Semitic Museum, with more than 40,000...
174 Liberty St, Concord, MA 01742, USA
It’s only about 20 miles from Boston to Concord—it just seems longer if you’re under sniper fire the whole way. Minute Man National Historic Park in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, tells the story of Paul Revere’s...
137 Warren Ave, Plymouth, MA 02360, USA
If you attended grammar school in southern New England, chances are you went on a field trip to Plymouth to see the replica of the Mayflower and the living-history museum built to re-create the world of the Plimoth Plantation, established by the...
1 Franklin Park Rd, Boston, MA 02121, USA
The final bauble in Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Franklin Park sits on 485 acres that include woodlands with walking paths designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, an 18-hole golf course, and a creepy former bear habitat. The high point at...
Charles River Esplanade, Boston, MA 02114, USA
Borrow a bike and get down by the Charles River to explore this popular linear park, which runs along the river through the Back Bay and the Beacon Hill neighborhood (albeit separated from both by the Storrow Drive expressway). A paved, 18-mile...
