Top 10: must-see in Metro Boston

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 There are a lot more reasons than 10 to visit the greater boston area,  and there is something for every one to enjoy!

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Here goes the list:

 

Boston attraction No. 10

Boston Quincy Market

Most people know it as Quincy Market, although its official name is the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Whatever you call it, this indoor-outdoor market is a great place for both shopping and dining.

Quincy Market, also called Faneuil Hall Marketplace, is a great place to stop for a refreshment break during your walk of the 2.5-mile Freedom Trail in Boston. The indoor-outdoor market is home to dozens of restaurants and food vendors

Boston attraction No. 9

Boston Duck Tours

A fleet of "Ducks", brightly colored, vintage World War II amphibious vehicles provide narrated, half-land, half-water tours of Boston. Do not be alarmed when your Duck abandons its wheels and lowers itself onto the Charles River! Tours cover many of Boston's downtown tourist attractions famous spots like the State House and the Prudential Tower. Keep in mind, Tour guides encourage quacking! Tickets sell out quickly, especially on summer weekends. So go and quack away with Boston Duck Tours.

Boston attraction No. 8 

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Boston, MA 02115

At the beginning of the 20th Century, heiress and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner built a home modeled after a 15th-century Venetian palace. Gardener was a great patroness of famous artists, such as James Whistler and John Singer Sargent. She also acquired European masterpieces, and her palace is now a museum filled with works by Titian, Matisse, Rembrandt, and Raphael. The courtyard of this Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is an oasis in any season, filled with beautiful plants and flowers. 

Boston attraction No. 7

Public Garden

Arlington Street and Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116

Just across Charles Street from the Boston Common , Public Garden is elegantly landscaped with flower beds, lagoons, walking paths and statues, including a notable monument of George Washington on a horse. You can watch couples posing for their wedding photos every summer weekend. The children's story Make Way for Ducklings took place here, and there is a popular sculpture of the ducklings in the northeast corner of the park. A ride in the famous Swan Boats is an essential experience for any visitor.  

Boston attraction No. 6

Boston Common
Boston Common founded 1634

Hear the echoes of 350 years of the most extraordinary history of America's oldest park? Here the Colonial militia mustered for the Revolution. In 1768, the hated British Redcoats began an eight-year encampment. George Washington, John Adams and General Lafayette came here to celebrate our nation's independence. The 1860s saw Civil War recruitment and anti-slavery meetings. During World War I, victory gardens sprouted. For World War II, the Common gave most of its iron fencing for scrape metal.

Boston Common continues to be a stage for free speech and public assembly. Here, during the 20th century, Charles Lindbergh promoted commercial aviation. Anti-Vietnam War and civil right rallies were held, including one led by Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1979, Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass.

Frederick Law Olmsted never touched Boston Common, but his sons did. About 1913, their firm supervised the paving of walkways, the replenishment of the soil, and the moving of 15-ton trees.

From a utilitarian common ground for activities like grazing, militia formations and public hangings, the Common evolved. Its peaks were leveled cows were banned and 19th Century Bostonians added trees, fountains and statuary. The Common became the park-like greenspace we know today. The park includes ballfields, a totlot and the Frog Pond, which provides skating in winter and a spray pool for children in the summer. http://www.bostoncommonfrogpond.org/

The Friends of the Public Garden is a non-profit citizen's advocacy group formed in 1970 to preserve and enhance the Boston Public Garden, Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall in collaboration with the Mayor and the Parks & Recreation Department. The Friends number over 2,500 members and many volunteers. The Friends have also produced a brochure detailing the park's history. http://www.friendsofthepublicgarden.org/

 Boston attraction No. 5

Arnold Arboretum
Established 1872

The Arboretum is a living museum dedicated to the study and appreciation of woody plants. Upon its 265 acres grow 15,000 trees, shrubs and vines, each of which is scientifically documented and available for teaching or research.

The Arboretum's story begins with two interesting partnerships. First Harvard University curates the collections and maintains the landscape, while the city, which owns the land and has leased it to the school for 1,000 years, maintains the infrastructure. The other partnership is that of Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Sprague Sargent.

In their collaboration, Sargent was the scientist who collected and sited thousands of specimens by genus (or family). Olmsted was the designer who laid out the road system and overall planting scheme to ensure a natural look in harmony with the rest of the Necklace.

Thanks to the two men's dedication, the Arboretum today displays world renowned collections of maples, crabapples, lilacs and rhododendrons, as well as the many other trees and shrubs that can grow in our climate. Come anytime, there is always something making a beautiful impression, including the top of Peters Hill which offers one of Boston's best vistas.

In 1880 Frederick Law Olmsted wrote of the Arboretum site, "On (these) acres much the best arboretum in the world can be formed." Today, his words seem prophetic. For a map of the facility, click on www.arboretum.harvard.edu/visitors/map.html. For more information about the Arboretum and its collections visit www.arboretum.harvard.edu

The Emerald Necklace Conservancy is a non-profit citizen's advocacy group whose mission is to protect, restore, maintain and promote the landscape, waterways and parkways of the Emerald Necklace park system as special places for people to visit and enjoy. The organization focuses on the six parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

 

 Boston attraction No. 4

Commonwealth Avenue Mall
Established 1856 - 1888

In Colonial times, this area known as Back Bay was literally that: an inland bay alongside the peninsula on which Boston was established. Twice a day the Atlantic tides would send cleansing waves up the Charles River to flood it. That is, until the 1820s, when an enterprising mill company built a dam along what is now Beacon Street.

Some 50 years later, the state finished the job with landfill. Commonwealth Avenue Mall became the spine of the elegant new Back Bay neighborhood and the crucial green link between the Public Garden and Frederick Law Olmsted's park system.

The Mall's 32 acres were designed in the French boulevard style by Arthur Gilman in 1856. Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Sprague Sargent, partners in creating the Arnold Arboretum, were asked in 1880 for advice on tree planting patterns. Their suggestion was "to obtain . . . the uniformity which seems to us essential to the future beauty and dignity of the finest street in the city." removing the trees already planted and replacing them with two single rows of European elms. Fearing public outcry at losing existing trees, the City Council rejected the proposal. Still, the Mall was known for magnificent American elms, some of which survive the Dutch Elm disease that devastated the species in recent decades.

Today, sweetgum, green ash, maple, linden, zelkova, Japanese pagoda and elm define this formal avenue, along with monuments decorating its expansive central promenade.

The Friends of the Public Garden and Common is a non-profit citizen's advocacy group formed in 1970 to preserve and enhance the Boston Public Garden, Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall in collaboration with the Mayor and the Parks Department of the City of Boston. The Friends number over 2500 members and many volunteers. The Friends have also produced a brochure detailing the park's history. www.friendsofthepublicgarden.org

 

Boston attraction No. 3


The Museum of Science (MoS)

MOS is a Boston, Massachusetts landmark, located in Science Park, a plot of land spanning the Charles River. Along with over 500 interactive exhibits, the Museum features a number of live presentations throughout the building everyday, along with shows at the Charles Hayden Planetarium and the Mugar Omni IMAX theater, the only domed IMAX screen in New England. The Museum is also an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and is home to over 100 animals, many of which have been rescued and rehabilitated from various dangerous situations. The Museum is also one of the city's two bases of operations for Boston Duck Tours.

 Some history about the Boston Museum of Science

The Museum began as the Boston Society of Natural History in 1830, founded by a collection of men who wished to share scientific interests. In essence, the museum began as a place where these men could store and display skins and other trophies of their travels to Africa and Asia. Today, a number of taxidermed specimens remain on display, much as they do at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, as well as many other museums, teaching children about the animals of New England and of the world. In 1864, after the Society had gone through several temporary facilities, a building was purchased in the Back Bay area of the city and dubbed the "New England Museum of Natural History." There it remained through World War II, presumably growing and changing over the decades into more of a science museum and less of a gentleman's club for safari trophies.

After the war, this building was sold, and the museum was reestablished under the name "Boston Museum of Science". Under the leadership of Bradford Washburn, the Society negotiated with the Metropolitan District Commission for a 99-year lease of the land now known as Science Park. The Museum pays $1 a year to the state for use of the land. Construction and development began in 1948, and the Museum opened in 1951, arguably the first all-encompassing science museum in the country. In these first few years, the Museum developed a traveling planetarium, a version of which is still brought to many elementary schools in the Greater Boston area every year. They also obtained during these early years "Spooky," a great horned owl who became a symbol or mascot of the Museum; he lived to age 38, the longest any great horned owl is known to have lived.

The Science Park/West End MBTA station was opened in 1956, and the Charles Hayden Planetarium in 1958.

Many more expansions continued into the 1970s and 1980s. In 1999, The Computer Museum in Boston closed and became part of the Museum of Science, integrating some of its displays, although the collection moved to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. [1]

A major renovation and expansion took place during 2005 and 2006.

 Boston attraction No. 2

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

Established  1870
Location  465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Director  Malcolm Rogers
Website  www.mfa.org 

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. The museum was founded in 1870 and its current location dates to 1909. In addition to its curatorial undertakings, the museum is affiliated with an art academy, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan. The current director of the museum is Malcolm Rogers.

 

Boston attraction No. 1

Boston FreedomTrail

Freedom Trail is a three-mile ribbon of red paint that links 16 historical sites. Most visitors start the trail at the Boston Common . The National Park Service offers 90-minute guided tours starting at the Boston National Historical Park Visitor Center . Maps are also available here. Stops include the Old State House , Faneuil Hall and the Old North Church . You can also discover Paul Revere's house , the site of the Boston Massacre, and the Copp's Hill Burial Ground . At the end of the trail in Charlestown, the Bunker Hill Monument and the U.S.S. Constitution await you.

 

Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 July 2009 12:36 )  

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