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Boston’s best walking tour is free, self-guided, chock-full of history, and open year round. Just follow the painted red stripe threading its way past historic buildings such as the Massachusetts State House (Hall of Flags (see The Freedom Trail)).

What was once a dilapidated, post-revolutionary mercantile area now sets the standard for urban-renewal projects worldwide. It boasts an indoor food court in Quincy Market, shops, and street performers (see Faneuil Hall Marketplace).

Swan boats drift beneath weeping willows, children splash in fountains, and a bronzed General George Washington oversees the proceedings from his lofty steed (see Boston Common & Public Garden).

Boston may have its legendary blue blood, but neighboring Cambridge claims the Harvard Crimson. Pumping vigorously since 1636, the undisputed heart of American academia has cultivated some of the world’s greatest thinkers (see Harvard University).

The MFA, Boston’s undisputed queen of the visual arts scene, boasts some of the most extensive collections of Japanese, ancient Egyptian, and Impressionist works of art in the world. Van Gogh’s Houses at Auvers (1890;) is just one of many treasures in the European Art collection (see Museum of Fine Arts).

This Neo-Romanesque church is regarded as the finest execution of architect H. H. Richardson’s distinctive style. Equally impressive is La Farge’s stunning Christ in Majesty window ( (see Trinity Church)).

The works of Rembrandt, Botticelli, and Sargent appear all the more masterful in Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Venetian-style palazzo. The courtyard’s myriad treasures include an ancient Roman marble sarcophagus dating to AD 222 (see Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum).

Boston’s deep harbor made it ideal for one of the US Navy’s first shipyards. USS Constitution, the most famous of the yard’s progeny, is still docked here (see Charlestown Navy Yard).

Get personal with three species of penguins, harbor seals, and many other creatures of the deep. The vast 200,000 gallon (900,000 liter) Giant Ocean Tank is the aquarium’s centerpiece, where an upward-spiraling walkway guides you around the ecosystem (see New England Aquarium).