Boston's culture runs deeper than its revolution. A stolen-Vermeer palazzo, the oldest continuously operating art museum school in the country, a symphony hall acoustically ranked among the world's three best, and artist studios in converted wool warehouses.
Opens 10:00 Wed-Sun (Thu/Fri to 22:00), closed Mon-Tue. Adult admission $27, valid for two days within a 10-day window. The four-storey Art of the Americas Wing by Foster + Partners (2010) holds 53 galleries; Copley's portraits and the Egyptian Old Kingdom collection are world-class.
A 15th-century-style Venetian palazzo built in 1903 around a glass-roofed courtyard. Gardner's will forbids moving a single object, so empty frames still hang where thieves cut out a Vermeer and three Rembrandts in March 1990. Open 11:00-17:00, closed Tuesdays.
H. H. Richardson's 1877 masterpiece and the founding building of Richardsonian Romanesque, resting on 4,500 wooden piles driven into Back Bay landfill. John La Farge's interior murals cover 2,000 square metres; the Burne-Jones and Morris & Co. windows glow best mid-afternoon.
The 1895 Renaissance Revival palace on Dartmouth Street, the first large free municipal library in America. Bates Hall runs 66 metres under a barrel-vaulted ceiling; Sargent's Triumph of Religion murals line the third-floor gallery. Free entry, open until 20:00 Mon-Thu.
Opened 1900, the first concert hall designed using scientific acoustics — Harvard physicist Wallace Clement Sabine calculated the reverberation. Sixteen replica Greek and Roman statues line the niches. Free hour-long backstage tours run on selected weekdays in season.
Thomas Lamb's 1928 vaudeville palace on Washington Street, restored in 2004 after two decades dark. Gilded plasterwork, a 2,500-seat auditorium and the home stage of Boston Ballet's Nutcracker. The lobby is open to look into on performance days.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro's 2006 cantilever hangs 24 metres over the Fan Pier harbourwalk. The Mediatheque angles down to show only water through its window. Open 10:00-17:00, until 21:00 Thu-Fri, closed Mondays.
Opened 1947 by Barbadian immigrant Joseph Walcott, the first Black-owned nightclub in New England and still family-run. Live sets seven nights a week from 18:00, mostly Berklee and New England Conservatory players. No cover, standing room, cash bar.
Three museums — Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, Sackler — merged behind Renzo Piano's 2014 glass lantern roof. Around 250,000 objects, including the Rothko murals and the Forbes Pigment Collection of 2,500 historic colourants visible through the study-centre glass.
The paifang gate was a 1982 gift from Taiwan, flanked by Ming-dynasty-style foo dogs. Boston's is the only surviving Chinatown in New England; Ping On Alley marks the 1870s settlement of Chinese workers brought in as strikebreakers to North Adams.
Around 70 working studios in a converted 1900s warehouse in the South End. Open Studios run the first Friday of every month, 17:00-21:00, when painters, printmakers and jewellers open their doors. The SoWa Open Market runs Sundays May-October.
New England's largest concentration of artist studios, in brick wool warehouses built by the Boston Wharf Company from the 1880s. Around 300 artists remain despite Seaport development. The Channel murals and A Street galleries are visible from the pavement.