As of 2024update, Walk Score ranks Boston as the third most walkable U.S. city, with a Walk Score of 83, a Transit Score of 72, and a Bike Score of 69. Owing to factors such as necessity, the compactness of the city and large student population, 13 percent of the population commutes by foot, making it the highest percentage of pedestrian commuters in the country out of the major American cities. The city averaged 0.94 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8. The city of Boston has a higher than average percentage of households without a car. Surrounding the city is MA 128, a partial beltway which has been largely subsumed by other routes (mostly I-95 and I-93).
Celebrate America’s 250th anniversary at these Mass. events in 2026
37.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. There were 252,699 households, of which 20.4% had children under the age of 18 living in them, 25.5% were married couples living together, 16.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 54.0% were non-families. This fluctuation of people is caused by hundreds of thousands of suburban residents who travel to the city for work, education, health care, and special events. Boston is the third-most densely populated large U.S. city of over half a million residents, and the most densely populated state capital. In the 2020 census, Boston was estimated to have 691,531 residents living in 266,724 households—a 12% population increase over 2010.
New England restaurants land on OpenTable’s Top 100 in America
In 2016, 33.8 percent of Boston households lacked a car, compared with the national average of 8.7 percent. With nearly a third of Bostonians using public transit for their commute to work, Boston has the fourth-highest rate of public transit usage in the country. Boston Medical Center, in the South End neighborhood, is the region’s largest safety-net hospital and trauma center. Tufts Medical Center (formerly Tufts-New England Medical Center), in the southern portion of the Chinatown neighborhood, is affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine. Prominent medical facilities, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital are in the Beacon Hill area. Spanish-language television networks, including UniMás (WUTF-TV 27), Telemundo (WNEU 60, a sister station to WBTS-CD), and Univisión (WUNI 66), have a presence in the region, with WNEU and WUNI serving as network owned-and-operated stations.
- The Boston Globe also releases a teen publication to the city’s public high schools, called Teens in Print or T.i.P., which is written by the city’s teens and delivered quarterly within the school year.
- LGBT publications serve Boston’s large LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population such as The Rainbow Times, the only minority and lesbian-owned LGBT news magazine.
- The Boston Red Sox, a founding member of the American League of Major League Baseball in 1901, play their home games at Fenway Park, near Kenmore Square, in the city’s Fenway section.
- Many trade schools also exist in the city such as the Boston Career Institute, the North Bennet Street School, and Greater Boston Joint Apprentice Training Center.
- In 2000, non-Hispanic Whites were 49.5% of Boston’s population, making the city majority minority for the first time.
In 2010, the Catholic Church had the highest number of adherents as a single denomination in the Greater Boston area, with more than two million members and 339 churches, followed by the Episcopal Church with 58,000 adherents in 160 churches. Over 27,000 Chinese Americans made their home in Boston city proper in 2013. There is a large and historical Armenian community in Boston, and the city is home to the Armenian Heritage Park. Hispanic populations in southwest Boston neighborhoods are mainly made up of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, usually sharing neighborhoods in this section with African Americans and Blacks with origins from the Caribbean and Africa especially Cape Verdeans and Haitians.
Be sure to check the game schedule and buy tickets before the day you plan to visit (and if you’re a big baseball fan who happens to be in town when the Red Sox aren’t playing, you can also opt to tour the park instead). Get ideas for your next road trip, including single and multi-day itineraries for the US national parks. Take a walk back in time as you visit meetinghouses, burial grounds, Paul Revere’s house, and the Old North Church. Other parks are scattered throughout the city, with major parks and beaches near Castle Island and the south end, in Charlestown and along the Dorchester, South Boston, and East Boston shorelines. The city is home to several art museums and galleries, including the Museum of Fine Arts and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston is a walking city at heart–expect to be on your feet a lot when you are exploring things to do in Boston.
- Boston has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km2) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia.
- Several theaters are in or near the Theater District south of Boston Common, including the Cutler Majestic Theatre, Citi Performing Arts Center, the Colonial Theater, and the Orpheum Theatre.
- It is filled with videos and artifacts from his life and the 1960’s.
- If you head inside, you’ll not only find even more books, you can check out the posters for the rare books that are for sale as part of their collection.
You’ll find Boston and New England specialties, including oysters, lobster rolls, clam chowder, and brick-oven pizza from an outpost of Regina Pizzeria, a long-time North End spot. Once you have toured the city, you’ll have worked up an appetite. After taking these tours, I was confident I could get around the city on foot or the T. During my first few days in Boston, I took two tours specific to my interests.
#22 Walk or Jog Along the Charles River Esplanade
Boston is home to two convention centers—the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on the South Boston waterfront. Boston is home to the headquarters of Santander Bank and State Street Corporation, the latter specializing in asset management and custody services. Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund in the 1980s and has made Boston one of the top financial centers in the United States and a center for venture capital firms.
The Duck Tour covers all of the major sites in Boston. It’s wild and makes this visit even more fun. One of the coolest parts about the Mapparium is the acoustics. From a glass catwalk that spans the globe, view the globe from the inside out. Stroll around the lake, walk across the world’s smallest suspension bridge, go for a jog, or ride one of the Swan Boats.
Performing Arts in Boston
If you visit Boston in late September through October, you can see New England’s beautiful fall foliage on a full-day tour from your Boston hotel to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Now that you’ve taken a tour, visited a museum, and dined around Boston, you can wander. Walking tours sometimes use public transportation, allowing travelers to learn how to navigate the local subway or bus system. So, if you are visiting Boston for the first time, I’ve got five ideas for quickly acquainting yourself with the city.
US National Park Itineraries & Road Trip Ideas
Both breweries are located a bit far from the city center of Boston, but you can get here by taxi or Uber. With its central location in Boston, this makes a great spot to grab a bite to eat while you are touring the city. It would take a day to tour the entire building.
Restaurants in Boston
Visiting the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was a highlight of my Boston trip. It offers brewery tours (occasionally), guided tastings, delicious handmade pretzels at its beer hall, and a seasonal Pickleball Social Club with hourly court rentals. If you enjoy juicy, hazy New boston sober living England IPAs, I recommend visiting Harpoon Brewery in the Seaport District. The brewery offers a variety of tours, experiences, and events.
To see more Paul Revere silver and Revolutionary War relics, visit the Americas collection at the Museum of Fine Arts. Visit the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum to dump tea into the harbor like the colonists did. And with more than 40 museums in the Greater Boston area, you are likely to find one that suits your interests, too. I couldn’t get enough of the Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas artwork. Seriously, I could have spent an entire day moseying between galleries.
Tourism composes a large part of Boston’s economy, with 21.2 million domestic and international visitors spending $8.3 billion in 2011. The Route 128 corridor and Greater Boston continue to be a major center for venture capital investment, and high technology remains an important sector. The area’s schools are major employers and attract industries to the city and surrounding region. More than half the Jewish households in the Greater Boston area reside in the city itself, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Somerville, or adjacent towns. In a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 57% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christians, with 25% attending a variety of Protestant churches and 29% professing Roman Catholic beliefs.
Joining a tour probably would have provided more information, but for us, it was nice to explore the Freedom Trail at our own pace. At each stop, we took turns reading about what we were visiting. If you do one thing in Boston it should be a walk on the Freedom Trail. The Explorer Pass is better for those who plan to only visit a few sights, since this pass gives you access to 2, 3, 4, or 5 attractions. During our visit to Boston, I added up the cost of all of the attractions we visited with the Go Card and we saved over $100 per person!
The Quincy Market is part of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. If you are traveling with kids, add the Greenway Carousel to your list of places to visit. This was the second time the Holocaust Memorial was vandalized that summer, and there have only been two such incidences since its construction in 1995.
This museum is a great place to learn about the life of President John F. Kennedy. This is a tour that is great for kids and adults. Learn about the events leading up to this historic night, tour a replica of one of the merchant vessels, and even throw the tea overboard. While in Boston, you have the option to tour the Samuel Adams Brewery or the Harpoon Brewery. The Charles River Esplanade is a walking trail along the Charles River, located near the Back Bay region. Filled with food vendors and small shops, this is a bit touristy, but it is also a great place to get good, cheap food.
The geography of downtown and South Boston was particularly affected by the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (which ran from 1991 to 2007, and was known unofficially as the “Big Dig”). Back Bay includes many prominent landmarks, such as the Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, single-family homes and wooden/brick multi-family row houses. Downtown and its immediate surroundings (including the Financial District, Government Center, and South Boston) consist largely of low-rise masonry buildings – often federal style and Greek revival – interspersed with modern high-rises.
The city is also home to PBS member station WGBH-TV 2, a major producer of PBS programs, which also operates WGBX 44. The Christian Science Monitor, headquartered in Boston, was formerly a worldwide daily newspaper but ended publication of daily print editions in 2009, switching to continuous online and weekly magazine format publications. The Emerald Necklace includes the Back Bay Fens, Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, Boston’s largest body of freshwater, and Franklin Park, the city’s largest park and home of the Franklin Park Zoo. Boston Common, near the Financial District and Beacon Hill, is the oldest public park in the United States.