Explore Boston

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway is an art museum opened in 1903 by the collector Isabella Stewart Gardner in a building modelled on a Venetian palazzo. Galleries around a planted courtyard hold European, Asian and American art, including works by Titian, Rembrandt and Sargent. Empty frames recall the theft of 13 works in 1990.

The Shirley-Eustis House is a Georgian mansion in Roxbury, Boston, built between 1747 and 1751 as the country house of William Shirley, royal governor of Massachusetts, and later home of governor William Eustis. A National Historic Landmark restored in the 1980s, it is shown on guided tours with its carriage house and restored gardens and orchard.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, in Harvard's University Museum building on Oxford Street. Opened in 1998 as the public face of three Harvard research museums, it shows the Glass Flowers, some 4,300 glass models of plants by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, along with fossils, animals, minerals and meteorites.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum stands on Columbia Point in Dorchester, beside Boston Harbor. Designed by I. M. Pei and dedicated in 1979, it is the presidential library of the 35th president, run by the National Archives. Its exhibitions cover Kennedy's campaign, presidency and family, and a glass pavilion looks out over the harbor.

Franklin Park Zoo is a 29-hectare zoo in the north-east corner of Franklin Park, part of Boston's Emerald Necklace park chain, opened in 1912 and run today by Zoo New England. Its areas include the indoor Tropical Forest with western lowland gorillas, the Serengeti Crossing with zebras and giraffes, Bird's World and a children's farm.