Explore Boston

Faneuil Hall is a red-brick market and meeting hall in downtown Boston, opened in 1742 and enlarged by Charles Bulfinch in 1806. Known as the Cradle of Liberty for the speeches and protests held there before the American Revolution, it has shops on the ground floor, a National Park Service visitor center and the Great Hall upstairs, where rangers give talks.

The Old State House is a brick building of 1713 on State Street, the oldest surviving public building in Boston and the seat of the colonial government. The Boston Massacre of 1770 took place in front of it, and the Declaration of Independence was read from its balcony in 1776. Today it is a history museum run by Revolutionary Spaces, on the Freedom Trail.

The Old South Meeting House is a brick Puritan meeting house of 1729 on Washington Street. On 16 December 1773 some 5,000 people met here before the Boston Tea Party. Saved from demolition in the 1870s in one of the first preservation campaigns in the United States, it is now a museum and meeting space run by Revolutionary Spaces, on the Freedom Trail.

The New England Aquarium is a public aquarium on Central Wharf on the Boston waterfront, opened in 1969 in a concrete building designed by Peter Chermayeff of Cambridge Seven Associates. At its centre is the Giant Ocean Tank, a cylindrical coral reef tank of 760,000 litres, surrounded by penguins, sea turtles, seals and sea lions.

Old North Church, officially Christ Church, is an Episcopal church built in 1723 on Salem Street in Boston's North End, the oldest standing church in the city. On 18 April 1775 two lanterns were hung in its steeple to warn of British troop movements, the signal linked to Paul Revere's ride. Visitors see the box pews, the crypt and, on guided tours, the bell chamber.

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum is a museum on the Congress Street Bridge over Fort Point Channel about the protest of 16 December 1773, when colonists threw East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. Guided visits lead through a meeting house and aboard the replica ships Beaver and Eleanor, and the museum shows the Robinson Tea Chest from that night.

USS Constitution is a three-masted wooden frigate of the US Navy, launched in Boston in 1797 and still in commission, crewed by Navy sailors. It earned the name Old Ironsides in the War of 1812. The ship is berthed at the Charlestown Navy Yard, where visitors can go aboard, and the USS Constitution Museum beside it covers its history.

The Institute of Contemporary Art is a museum of contemporary art on the Boston Harbor waterfront in the Seaport District. Founded in 1936 as the Boston Museum of Modern Art, it moved in 2006 into a building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro whose upper galleries cantilever over the Harborwalk. It shows changing exhibitions, its own collection and performances.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is an art museum in the Fenway area, founded in 1870 in Copley Square and housed since 1909 in a granite building by Guy Lowell on Huntington Avenue. Its collection of more than 450,000 works ranges from ancient Egyptian and Japanese art to European paintings and American art in the Art of the Americas wing.

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.

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.