Downtown gives you the postcard, the neighborhoods give you the city. Each page covers what a neighborhood is actually like, what it costs to stay there, and how long it takes to reach the sights from it.
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The North End is known for three things stacked on top of each other: Revolutionary-era history, including the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church of the famous two-lantern signal; a long-standing Italian American food culture concentrated on Hanover and Salem streets; and a dense, walkable street grid that survived urban renewal when the neighboring Scollay Square did not.
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Back Bay is known for three things above all: the brownstone residential streets of Commonwealth Avenue and Marlborough Street, the shopping corridor of Newbury Street, and Copley Square, where Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library face each other across one of the most architecturally significant open spaces in America.
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Beacon Hill is known for its intact Federal-style brick row houses, its gas lamps and cobblestone lanes, and for carrying the Massachusetts State House plus a run of Freedom Trail sites on and around its slopes.
neighborhoods
Charlestown is known for three things stacked on one peninsula: the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship afloat; the Bunker Hill Monument, marking the first major battle of the American Revolution; and the Charlestown Navy Yard, a working federal shipyard turned National Park Service site.
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Boston’s Chinatown centers on Beach, Tyler, Hudson and neighboring streets, east and southeast of the Theater District and south of Downtown Crossing.
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Allston and Brighton are two adjacent residential neighborhoods forming Boston's westernmost planning district, separated loosely by the Massachusetts Turnpike and Linden Street.
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Brookline is a separate town in Norfolk County, not a Boston neighborhood, even though Boston surrounds it on three sides and it shares a border with the city for miles.
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Downtown Boston is the roughly half-mile area bounded by Boston Common to the west, the harbor to the east, the Rose Kennedy Greenway to the north, and Chinatown and the Theater District to the south.
harvard square
Harvard Square is in Cambridge, a separate city across the Charles from Boston.
neighborhoods
Jamaica Plain is known for three things: the Arnold Arboretum, a Harvard-run tree museum and research collection that is free to everyone; Jamaica Pond, a kettle pond with a public boathouse and a 1.5-mile walking path; and Centre Street, a two-mile commercial strip of independent restaurants, cafes and breweries.
seaport
The Seaport District occupies the South Boston waterfront between Fort Point Channel and the main harbor, directly across the water from downtown Boston, and it is known for contemporary architecture, the Institute of Contemporary Art, a growing restaurant row, and the Harborwalk that traces its edge.
neighborhoods
The South End is known for having one of the largest concentrations of Victorian brick rowhouses in the United States, laid out around small residential squares and parks, and for a restaurant scene that runs along Tremont Street, Columbus Avenue, and Washington Street.
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The Boston Waterfront is the harbor-facing edge of downtown, running from the North End in the north to the Seaport in the south, and Long Wharf is its centerpiece pier, jutting into the harbor beside the New England Aquarium at the foot of State Street.
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Dorchester is Boston's largest neighborhood, a residential peninsula south of downtown that was independent for more than two centuries before joining the city, and it still behaves like a collection of villages rather than one district.
neighborhoods
Fenway Kenmore is the Boston neighborhood immediately west of the Back Bay, running roughly from Massachusetts Avenue to the Charles River, and it combines two distinct zones: the Fenway, a street grid of brownstones and cultural institutions around Fenway Park, and Kenmore Square, the traffic circle and transit hub where Beacon Street, Commonwealth Avenue and Brookline Avenue meet.
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Roxbury is a large residential neighborhood directly south of downtown Boston, bordered roughly by the South End, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury Crossing, and Dorchester.
Neighborhoods
East Boston is known for three things: Logan Airport sits inside its borders, its harborfront parks give the clearest skyline views in the city, and its food scene reflects more than a century of immigrant communities, from Italian to Central American, spread across compact squares like Maverick and Central.
neighborhoods
South Boston is the peninsula directly south of downtown, bounded by Fort Point Channel and the South End to the west, Dorchester Bay and the harbor to the east and south, and the Fort Point and Seaport waterfront to the north.
neighborhoods
The Theater District is the several-block area along Tremont and Washington Streets between the Boston Common and Chinatown, roughly bounded by Boylston Street to the north and Stuart Street to the south.
