The Original Freedom Trail

The golden dome topping the Massachusetts State House rises above Beacon Hill, sheathed in twenty-three karat gold leaf that catches the afternoon sun. Designed by Charles Bulfinch and finished in seventeen ninety-eight, this building…

The white steeple of Park Street Church rises two hundred and seventeen feet above the corner of Park and Tremont Streets. It serves as a navigational beacon, marking the edge of the Boston Common. In eighteen twenty-nine, William Lloyd…

The Granary Burying Ground holds thousands of souls behind a high iron fence on Tremont Street, distinguished by the slate headstones crowded together in uneven rows. Established in sixteen sixty, this site served as a final resting place…

King's Chapel displays a heavy stone exterior and a grand portico of fluted wooden columns, a design that feels physically out of place among the surrounding modern skyscrapers. It began as the first Anglican church in Boston in sixteen…

The Old South Meeting House features a tall, slender steeple that rises above the surrounding glass office towers of the Financial District. Puritans built this brick structure in seventeen twenty-nine for their Sunday services. During the…

The Old State House sits at the intersection of Washington and State Streets, marked by a golden lion and unicorn perched high above its gables. This brick building served as the seat of the Massachusetts colonial government for decades.…

A ring of cobblestones sits embedded in the traffic island right where State Street meets the Old State House. These stones mark the spot where British soldiers fired into a crowd of colonists on the night of March fifth, seventeen…

The grasshopper weathervane perched atop the cupola is covered in gold leaf. Peter Duer, a master craftsman, hammered that copper insect into shape in seventeen forty-two. Legend says it functioned as a secret code during the Revolutionary…