Boston in 3 days: where America's history begins — the Boston Massacre site, the Tea Party meeting house, Paul Revere's neighborhood. Then Harvard (America's oldest university, 1636) and MIT, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with 13 empty frames from the 1990 $500M art theft, and Neptune Oyster's legendary lobster roll.
The self-guided 4km walk from Boston Common through the Old South Meeting House (where the Tea Party was planned on Dec 16, 1773), the Old State House balcony (where the Declaration was first read to Bostonians) and the Granary Burying Ground (Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe most intact colonial residential neighborhood in the US: the 60m cobblestone Acorn Street (still gas-lit), the Louisburg Square private enclave (Louisa May Alcott's address), the Charles Street antique and bookshop strip.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe New England clam chowder (quahog hard-shell clams, cream, potato, pork belly) in a hollowed sourdough boule at the 1826 market where revolutionary speeches were given in Faneuil Hall next door.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuide15.7% of Boston is Irish-American: the Bull and Finch pub (the exterior used in Cheers (1982–1993)) and the Sam Adams Boston Lager (brewed in Boston since 1984 from a great-great-grandfather recipe, now America's second-largest craft brewer).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe oldest university in the US (1636): the Massachusetts Hall (1720, still in use), the John Harvard statue (it is not John Harvard, the face is a student model and the date is wrong), and the Harvard Art Museums (Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso and the finest German Expressionism collection outside Germany).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuide97 Nobel Laureates, ranked #1 globally for engineering: the Gehry Stata Center (the computer science and AI lab in a building that looks structurally unsound by design) and the thin concrete Kresge Auditorium shell (Saarinen, 1955).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Venetian palazzo with the collection displayed exactly as 1903 (by will: nothing can be moved or the collection goes to Harvard). In 1990, the largest art theft in history: 13 works including the only privately-held Vermeer (The Concert) vanished. The frames have stood empty ever since.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe first US botanical garden (1837): the Swan Boats (pedal-powered swan-shaped boats, operated by the Paget family without interruption since 1877), the Make Way for Ducklings bronze sculpture (Mrs. Mallard and Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe 5th largest US art museum: the Hokusai and Hiroshige woodblock collection (the largest outside Japan, accumulated by Boston collectors in the Meiji period), the Egyptian excavation finds, and the most important collection of American paintings in the US.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Italian-American neighborhood (Boston's oldest settlement, 1630): the Paul Revere House (1680, oldest surviving downtown Boston building), and the cannoli rivalry between the thick-ricotta Mike's (tourist choice) and the authentic-Sicilian Modern (local choice). One of each, side by side. Judge for yourself.
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