Free Walking Sightseeing Tour #1 in Boston, United States

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Churches & Art
Nature
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Historical
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Tour Facts

Number of sights 20 sights
Distance 8.8 km
Ascend 294 m
Descend 303 m

Explore Boston in United States with this free self-guided walking tour. The map shows the route of the tour. Below is a list of attractions, including their details.

Activities in BostonIndividual Sights in Boston

Sight 1: Commonwealth Ave Mall

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Commonwealth Ave Mall

Commonwealth Avenue is a major street in the cities of Boston and Newton, Massachusetts. It begins at the western edge of the Boston Public Garden, and continues west through the neighborhoods of the Back Bay, Kenmore Square, Boston University, Allston, Brighton and Chestnut Hill. It continues as part of Route 30 through Newton until it crosses the Charles River at the border of the town of Weston.

Wikipedia: Commonwealth Avenue (Boston) (EN), Website

777 meters / 9 minutes

Sight 2: MDC Centennial Memorial

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MDC Centennial Memorial

The Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston is a system of reservations, parks, parkways and roads under the control of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) in and around Boston that has been in existence for over a century. The title is used by the DCR to describe the areas collectively: "As a whole, the Metropolitan Park System is currently eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places", as outlined on the department's website. The DCR maintains a separate Urban Parks and Recreation division to oversee the system, one of five such divisions within the department—DCR's Bureau of State Parks and Recreation manages the remainder of Massachusetts state parks. Direct design and maintenance functions for the parkways and roads within the system are provided by the DCR Bureau of Engineering.

Wikipedia: Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston (EN)

319 meters / 4 minutes

Sight 3: The Lotta Fountain

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The Lotta Fountain

Lotta Fountain is a 1939 fountain and sculpture by artist Katharine Lane Weems and architects J. W. Ames and E. S. Dodge. It is installed along Boston's Charles River Esplanade in the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

Wikipedia: Lotta Fountain (EN), Website

299 meters / 4 minutes

Sight 4: Edwin Upton Curtis Memorial

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Edwin Upton Curtis Memorial

The Edwin Upton Curtis Memorial is a memorial commemorating Edwin Upton Curtis, installed along Boston's Charles River Esplanade, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The memorial features two large urns, and was originally installed near Clarendon Street during 1923–1924 before being relocation to their current position near the Hatch Shell.

Wikipedia: Edwin Upton Curtis Memorial (EN)

536 meters / 6 minutes

Sight 5: Gibson House

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The Gibson House Museum is an historic house museum located at 137 Beacon Street in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It preserves the 1860 Victorian rowhouse occupied by three generations of the Gibson family. The house was one of the first to be built in Back Bay, and has an unparalleled state of preservation that includes wallpaper, textiles, furnishings, and family artifacts and collections. Both the public and service areas of the house exhibit a high degree of preservation, and are viewable on tours. The property was designated a Boston Landmark in 1992 by the Boston Landmarks Commission and a National Historic Landmark in 2001.

Wikipedia: Gibson House Museum (EN), Website

213 meters / 3 minutes

Sight 6: First Church in Boston

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First Church in Boston is a Unitarian Universalist Church founded in 1630 by John Winthrop's original Puritan settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. The current building, located on 66 Marlborough Street in the Back Bay neighborhood, was designed by Paul Rudolph in a modernist style after a fire in 1968. It incorporates part of the earlier gothic revival building designed by William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt in 1867. The church has long been associated with Harvard University.

Wikipedia: First Church in Boston (EN), Website

347 meters / 4 minutes

Sight 7: Ether Monument

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Ether Monument

The Ether Monument, also known as The Good Samaritan, is a statue and fountain near the northwest corner of Boston's Public Garden, near the intersection of Arlington Street and Marlborough Street.

Wikipedia: Ether Monument (EN)

143 meters / 2 minutes

Sight 8: George Washington Statue

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An equestrian statue of George Washington by Thomas Ball is installed in Boston's Public Garden, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

Wikipedia: Equestrian statue of George Washington (Boston) (EN)

114 meters / 1 minutes

Sight 9: Japanese Lantern

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Japanese Lantern

Japanese Lantern is a 1587 lantern sculpture, installed in Boston Public Garden, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The lantern was given to the city by Bunkio Matsuki in 1904.

Wikipedia: Japanese Lantern (Boston) (EN), Website

216 meters / 3 minutes

Sight 10: Make Way For Ducklings

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Make Way for Ducklings is a sculpture by Nancy Schön, which recreates the duck family in Robert McCloskey's children's classic Make Way for Ducklings.

Wikipedia: Make Way for Ducklings (Schön) (EN), Website

204 meters / 2 minutes

Sight 11: William Hickling Prescott House

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William Hickling Prescott House, also known as the Headquarters House, is an historic house museum located at 55 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the left-hand portion of a double townhouse at 54–55 Beacon Street, seen in the photograph. The townhouse, built in 1808 to a design by Asher Benjamin, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 for its association with William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859), one of the nation's first historians. The house is now a museum operated by the Massachusetts chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, which purchased it for its headquarters in 1944.

Wikipedia: Headquarters House (Boston) (EN), Website

186 meters / 2 minutes

Sight 12: Francis Parkman House

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The Francis Parkman House is a National Historic Landmark at 50 Chestnut Street, on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. Speculated to be designed by Cornelius Coolidge and built in 1824, it is one of a series of fine brick townhouses on Beacon Hill. Its significance lies in its ownership and occupancy by noted historian and horticulturalist Francis Parkman (1823–1893) from 1865 until his death. While living here, Parkman produced a significant portion of his landmark work, France and England in North America, a multi-volume epic history recounting the conflict for control of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Wikipedia: Francis Parkman House (EN)

234 meters / 3 minutes

Sight 13: Louisburg Square

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Louisburg SquareAjay Suresh from New York, NY, USA / CC BY 2.0

Louisburg Square is a street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, bisected by a small private park. The park is maintained by the Louisburg Square Proprietors. While the Proprietors pay taxes to the City of Boston, the city does not own the park or its garden.

Wikipedia: Louisburg Square (EN)

646 meters / 8 minutes

Sight 14: General Joseph Hooker

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General Joseph Hooker

An equestrian statue of Joseph Hooker is installed outside the Massachusetts State House, facing Beacon Street in Boston, in the United States.

Wikipedia: Equestrian statue of Joseph Hooker (EN)

300 meters / 4 minutes

Sight 15: Granary Burying Ground

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The Granary Burying Ground in Massachusetts is the city of Boston's third-oldest cemetery, founded in 1660 and located on Tremont Street. It is the burial location of Revolutionary War-era patriots, including Paul Revere, the five victims of the Boston Massacre, and three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine. The cemetery has 2,345 grave-markers, but historians estimate that as many as 5,000 people are buried in it. The cemetery is adjacent to Park Street Church, behind the Boston Athenaeum and immediately across from Suffolk University Law School. It is a site on Boston's Freedom Trail. The cemetery's Egyptian revival gate and fence were designed by architect Isaiah Rogers (1800–1869), who designed an identical gate for Newport's Touro Cemetery.

Wikipedia: Granary Burying Ground (EN)

220 meters / 3 minutes

Sight 16: Kings Chapel

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Kings ChapelAjay Suresh from New York, NY, USA / CC BY 2.0

King's Chapel is an American independent Christian unitarian congregation affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association that is "unitarian Christian in theology, Anglican in worship, and congregational in governance." It is housed in what was for a time after the Revolution called the "Stone Chapel", an 18th-century structure at the corner of Tremont Street and School Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The chapel building, completed in 1754, is one of the finest designs of the noted colonial architect Peter Harrison, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 for its architectural significance. The congregation has worshipped according to a Unitarian version of the Book of Common Prayer since 1785, currently in its ninth edition.

Wikipedia: King's Chapel (EN)

313 meters / 4 minutes

Sight 17: 5 Post Office Square

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The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse, formerly the United States Post Office, Courthouse, and Federal Building, is a historic building at 5 Post Office Square in Boston, Massachusetts. The twenty-two-story, 331-foot (101 m) skyscraper was built between 1931 and 1933 to house federal courts, offices, and post office facilities. The Art Deco and Moderne structure was designed in a collaboration between the Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury Department and the Boston architectural firm of Cram and Ferguson. It occupies a city block bounded by Congress, Devonshire, Water, and Milk Streets, and has over 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) of floor space. The exterior of the building is faced in granite from a variety of New England sources, as well as Indiana limestone. It was built on the site of the 1885 United States Post Office and Sub-Treasury Building.

Wikipedia: John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse (EN)

447 meters / 5 minutes

Sight 18: Faneuil Hall

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Faneuil HallEric Kilby from Somerville, MA, USA / CC BY-SA 2.0

Faneuil Hall is a marketplace and meeting hall located near the waterfront and today's Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. Opened in 1742, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others encouraging independence from Great Britain. It is now part of Boston National Historical Park and a well-known stop on the Freedom Trail. It is sometimes referred to as "the Cradle of Liberty," though the building and location have ties to slavery.

Wikipedia: Faneuil Hall (EN), Website

1360 meters / 16 minutes

Sight 19: Ether Dome

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The Ether Dome is a surgical operating amphitheater in the Bulfinch Building at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, United States. It served as the hospital's operating room from its opening in 1821 until 1867. It was the site of the first public demonstration of the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic on October 16, 1846, otherwise known as Ether Day. Crawford Long, a surgeon in Georgia, had previously administered sulfuric ether in 1842, but this went unpublished until 1849. The Ether Dome event occurred when William Thomas Green Morton, a local dentist, used ether to anesthetize Edward Gilbert Abbott. John Collins Warren, the first dean of Harvard Medical School, then painlessly removed part of a tumor from Abbott's neck. After Warren had finished, and Abbott regained consciousness, Warren asked the patient how he felt. Reportedly, Abbott said, "Feels as if my neck's been scratched". Warren then turned to his medical audience and uttered "Gentlemen, this is no Humbug". This was presumably a reference to the unsuccessful demonstration of nitrous oxide anesthesia by Horace Wells in the same theater the previous year, which was ended by cries of "Humbug!" after the patient groaned with pain.

Wikipedia: Ether Dome (EN)

1896 meters / 23 minutes

Sight 20: Hoosac Stores

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The Hoosac Stores is a historic warehouse at 115 Constitution Road in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Originally designated Hoosac Stores 1 & 2, it is a six-story load-bearing brick warehouse, set just outside the gate of the Boston Navy Yard. A second, adjacent warehouse, identified as Hoosac Stores 3, was demolished in 2000 because it was structurally unsound.

Wikipedia: Hoosac Stores (EN), Website, Heritage Website

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Disclaimer Please be aware of your surroundings and do not enter private property. We are not liable for any damages that occur during the tours.

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