Boston Guide
Introduction to Boston
Boston is as close to the Old World as the New World gets, an American city that proudly trades on its colonial past, having served a crucial role in the country's development from a few wayward pilgrims right through to the Revolutionary War. No other city in America gives a better feel for the events and persons behind the nation's birth, all played out in Boston's wealth of emblematic and evocative colonial-era sights. Equally alluring are the city's attractive public spaces, and the diversity of its neighborhoods – student hives, ethnic enclaves, and stately districts of preserved townhouses.
Boston is also at the center of the American university system: more than sixty colleges call the area home, including illustrious Harvard and MIT, in the neighboring city of Cambridge, just across the Charles River. This academic connection has played a key part in the city's long left-leaning political tradition, which has spawned, most famously, the Kennedy family. Steeped in Puritan roots, local residents often display a slightly anachronistic Yankee pride, but it's one that has served to protect the city's identity. Indeed, the districts around Boston Common exude an almost small-town atmosphere, and, until the past decade or so, were relatively unmarred by chain stores and fast-food joints. Meanwhile, groups of Irish and Italian descent have carved out authentic and often equally unchanged communities in areas like the North End, Charlestown, and South Boston.
Today, Boston's relatively small size – both physically and in terms of population (eighteenth among US cities) – and its provincial feel actually serve to the city's advantage. Though it has expanded significantly through landfills and annexation since it was settled in 1630, it has never lost its core, which remains a tangle of streets over old cowpaths clustered around Boston Common (which was itself originally used as cattle pasture). Delightfully, this center can really only be explored properly on foot; for even as Boston has evolved from busy port to blighted city to the rejuvenated and prosperous place it is today, it has remained, fundamentally, a city on a human scale.