Luxury hotels in Boston

Boston guide

Boston: the Freedom Trail

Four kilometres through the American Revolution, then Back Bay, Harvard and the harbour.

The Freedom Trail, a red-brick line of about four kilometres linking sixteen historic sites, is the most cited thing to do in Boston. It runs from Boston Common past the Old State House and Paul Revere's House to the USS Constitution, and a guided walk brings the Revolution to life.

Then walk Beacon Hill and the brownstones of Back Bay, see the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and cross the river to Harvard. Autumn, from late September to October, is the most beautiful season, with lobster rolls by the harbour in summer.

Harvard and Cambridge

Harvard University, founded in 1636 in Cambridge across the Charles River, is one of Boston's most cited visits: Harvard Yard, the John Harvard statue, and the Harvard Art Museums, in a building by Renzo Piano. Student-led tours explain the campus traditions.

Nearby, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has its own museum and striking architecture, including Frank Gehry's Stata Center. Harvard Square's bookshops and cafés are lively, and the river walk at sunset gives a fine view of Boston.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the MFA

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a Venetian-style palazzo built around a flowering courtyard, is one of Boston's most cited museums; empty frames still hang where paintings stolen in 1990, among them a Vermeer and Rembrandts, were cut away in the largest unsolved art theft in history.

A short walk away, the Museum of Fine Arts holds one of the most comprehensive collections in the United States, from Egyptian art to the Impressionists and American paintings by Sargent. Both are in the Fenway, near the baseball park.