10 Boston Hotels On or Beside the Red Line in the Pavement

There is a red line set into the pavement of Boston that runs for four kilometres from the Common, through the old city, across the river to Charlestown, and ends at the USS Constitution. It passes sixteen sites: the State House, the Old South Meeting House, Faneuil Hall, Paul Revere's house, the Old North Church, the Bunker Hill monument.

You follow it on foot. That is the whole mechanism, and it works because Boston is the most walkable major city in America — a colonial street plan that was never gridded, a compact centre, and a river and harbour that keep it contained.

Where the trail runs, and where to stay against it

The Freedom Trail starts at Boston Common, which is the oldest public park in the country and sits at the join of three neighbourhoods.

Back Bay, west of the Common, is the nineteenth-century grid of brownstones: Newbury Street shopping, the Public Garden, and most of the good hotels. Flat, elegant and five minutes from the trailhead.

Beacon Hill, north of the Common, is gas-lit, cobbled and steep, with the State House at the top and the trail running through it.

The waterfront and the North End are at the far end: the harbour, the Italian quarter, and the oldest streets in the city.

Cambridge, across the river, is a separate proposition with Harvard and MIT and about twenty minutes on the subway.

The ten below are grouped accordingly.

Back Bay and the Public Garden

The most convenient base: flat, walkable, at the western end of the Common.

The Newbury Boston occupies a restored 1927 building on the corner of the Public Garden with a very good restaurant and a terrace, and it is the best hotel in the city after a substantial renovation.

Four Seasons Boston sits facing the Public Garden with the most consistent service in Boston and rooms looking across the swan boats to Beacon Hill.

Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Street, Boston occupies the upper floors of a new tower in Back Bay with the largest rooms in the city, a spa and a restaurant on the fiftieth floor.

Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston sits on Copley Square in the 1912 Beaux-Arts building facing the Trinity Church and the library, and it is the city's grand hotel.

Mandarin Oriental, Boston occupies a tower on Boylston Street with a spa, an indoor pool and reliable large rooms.

Beacon Hill and the Common

Along the trail itself, uphill and cobbled.

XV Beacon occupies a 1903 Beaux-Arts building on Beacon Hill with a lift attendant, a fireplace in every room and sixty-odd rooms. It is the most discreet address in Boston.

The Liberty, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Boston sits in a converted nineteenth-century jail at the foot of Beacon Hill, with the original cell block visible in the atrium and a bar in what was the exercise yard.

Boston Omni Parker House Hotel occupies the oldest continuously operating hotel in America, on the trail near the State House, where the Boston cream pie was invented and Ho Chi Minh worked in the kitchen.

The waterfront and the financial district

The harbour end, near the North End and the aquarium.

Boston Harbor Hotel sits on Rowes Wharf under the arch that frames the harbour, with a water taxi to the airport from the door, which is the most civilised airport transfer in America.

The Langham, Boston occupies a converted 1922 leather warehouse in the financial district with a spa, a pool and a short walk to Faneuil Hall.

What we have left off

The hotels in the Seaport are excluded, and they are the newest rooms in the city with harbour views and good restaurants. The Seaport is a decade-old development on landfill across the channel, and walking from it to the Freedom Trail means crossing a bridge into a different Boston.

What to do

Walk the trail. All of it, in one go, takes about three hours without stopping and most of a day with. Charlestown at the end has the Constitution and the monument.

Then walk the other things: the Public Garden and the swan boats, Newbury Street, and the Esplanade along the Charles.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a Venetian palazzo built in Boston by a collector who specified that nothing could ever be moved, and it is the most unusual museum in America. The Museum of Fine Arts is nearby and enormous.

Cross to Cambridge for Harvard Yard and the bookshops in Harvard Square.

Eat in the North End for Italian, get oysters and a lobster roll, and go to Fenway if the season allows, because it is the oldest ballpark in the majors and the building is the point.

Practical notes

Logan is remarkably close to the centre, and the water taxi from the airport to Rowes Wharf takes about ten minutes and is the best way in.

May, June, September and October are ideal. Autumn colour peaks in mid-October and the city fills. Summer is humid. Winter is cold and snowy and the trail is still walkable in good boots.

The T is straightforward. A car is a liability; Boston's street plan predates cars by two centuries and it shows.

Questions people actually ask

Is Boston really that walkable?

Yes, more so than any other large American city. The centre is about three kilometres across and the trail is designed to be walked.

Back Bay or the waterfront?

Back Bay for the Common, shopping and flat pavements. The waterfront for the harbour and the North End.

Is Cambridge worth staying in?

For a university visit, yes. Otherwise it is twenty minutes on the T and better as a day.

How many nights?

Three. Four with a day trip to Salem, Concord or the Cape.

If you only book one

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