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Boston’s urban zoo houses over 200 species of animals. Its Tropical Forest section boasts gorillas, leopards, tropical birds, and many other exotic creatures. Butterfly Landing, open during the summer months, positively brims with the brilliantly colored insects. The Children’s Zoo allows kids to get up close and personal with animals of the decidedly huggable variety.

The Frog Pond makes children feel like protagonists in a quaint picture book. As soon as temperatures dip below freezing, kids flock to the pond for ice skating and hot chocolate at the adjacent warming hut. Boston’s oft-oppressive summer days lure them back for splashing and frivolity beneath the central fountain.

The oldest remaining private residence on Beacon Hill built by African-Americans is a highlight of the Black Heritage Trail. George Middleton, a white revolutionary war veteran, commissioned the house’s construction shortly after the war. Legend has it that Middleton commanded an all-black company dubbed the “Bucks of America.”

One of the first private residences to be built in Back Bay (c.1859), Gibson House remains beautifully intact. The house has been preserved as a monument to the era, thanks largely to the efforts of its final resident (the grandson of the well-to-do woman who built the house). So frozen in time does this house appear that you might feel like you’re intruding on someone’s inner sanctum, and an earlier age. Highlights of the tour include some elegant porcelain dinnerware, 18th-century heirloom jewelry, and exquisite black walnut woodwork throughout the house.

Originally built in the 17th-century to connect the shipping wharves to Dock Square (now Faneuil Hall Marketplace (see Faneuil Hall Marketplace)), Hanover Street was widened in 1870 to accommodate the busy flow of commerce. Today, as the North End’s principal artery with cafés and eateries aplenty, it is the place to come for a slice of the action.

One of the principal developers of Beacon Hill, Harrison Gray Otis (see Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848))served in the Massachusetts legislature and gained a reputation for living la dolce vita in this 1796 Bulfinch-designed manse. Like a post-Revolutionary Gatsby, Otis ensured his parties were the social events of the year. After falling into disrepair, the property was acquired in 1916 by the historical preservation society and meticulously restored to its original grandeur.

Harvard’s three art museums, the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler, may be radically different but they share the privilege of exhibiting one of the world’s finest collegiate art collections. While the Fogg boasts the city’s most extensive Picasso collection, the Busch-Reisinger leans toward the Bauhaus and German expressionist movements. And just down the block, the Sackler frequently rotates its impressive holdings of Egyptian and later Indian art (see Harvard University).

Holy Cross, the largest Roman Catholic church in Massachusetts, acts as the seat of the archbishop of Boston. The cathedral was constructed in 1875 (on the site of the municipal gallows) to serve the largely Irish-American workers who lived in the adjoining shantytown. Today the congregation is principally of Hispanic origin. Of note are the magnificent stained glass windows, which include rare colored glass imported from Munich in the 19th century, and the powerful Hook & Hastings organ, which seems to make every piece of Roxbury puddingstone in the building reverberate.