Explore Massachusetts

Eastern Massachusetts compresses nearly four centuries of American history into a stretch of coast you can cross in an afternoon. The Mayflower passengers came ashore at Plymouth in 1620; a decade later the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company settled Boston; and in April 1775 the first battles of the Revolution were fought at Lexington and Concord. For anyone weighing the things to do in Massachusetts, that history is the natural place to begin, because it is still visible in meeting houses, town greens, stone walls and harbor fronts throughout the region.

Boston is the center of it all. The state capital holds the Freedom Trail, a 2.5-mile route linking sixteen historic sites, along with Boston Common, set aside in 1634, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Symphony Hall. Its neighborhoods range from the gas-lit lanes of Beacon Hill and the brownstones of Back Bay to the Victorian rows of the South End and the contemporary waterfront of the Seaport.

Across the Charles River, Cambridge is home to Harvard University, founded in 1636, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together with the universities and teaching hospitals of Boston, they make the region one of the world's leading centers of education, medicine and research. Bookshops, lecture halls, laboratories and riverside paths shape everyday life on both banks.

West of the city, the landscape turns to woodland, stone walls and village centers. Brookline, Newton, Wellesley, Weston and Dover sit along the route of the Boston Marathon or the meanders of the Charles River, with conservation land, historic churches and town commons. Further out, Concord and Lexington preserve the ground of April 19, 1775: the Battle Green, the Old North Bridge and Minute Man National Historical Park, as well as Walden Pond and the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott.

To the north, the coast runs past Marblehead, with its harbor and eighteenth-century streets, to Salem, Gloucester and Rockport, where fishing and maritime trade built some of the oldest ports in the country. To the south, Quincy holds the birthplaces and homes of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and the harbor towns of Hingham and Cohasset look out over islands, rocky ledges and the open bay. Plymouth, further down the coast, keeps the story of the 1620 landing alive at Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower II and Plimoth Patuxet Museums.

Then comes the Cape. Cape Cod reaches roughly sixty miles into the Atlantic, crossed by the Cape Cod Canal and lined with lighthouses, salt marshes, cranberry bogs and the long dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore, established in 1961. Each of its fifteen towns has its own character, from harbor villages on Nantucket Sound to the galleries of Provincetown at the outer tip.

Beyond the Cape lie the islands. Martha's Vineyard, reached by ferry from Woods Hole, offers the whaling-era captains' houses of Edgartown, the gingerbread cottages of Oak Bluffs and the clay cliffs of Aquinnah. Nantucket, about thirty miles out to sea, was once the center of the world's whaling trade; its cobblestone town center is preserved as a National Historic Landmark district, and its moors, beaches and lighthouses remain open to walk.

Across all of it, the seasons set the rhythm. Spring brings the Boston Marathon and blossoms in the Public Garden; summer belongs to beaches, sailing and outdoor concerts on the Esplanade; autumn colors the woodlands west of the city and the cranberry harvest on the South Shore; and winter brings quiet harbors, holiday lights and evenings at the theater and symphony.

This guide gathers our area pages for eastern Massachusetts. Each one looks at a town's history, culture, dining, institutions and places to spend a day. Pages are added as they are written, and each links back here. When you are ready to look at homes, you can search current Massachusetts properties or read the Boston Market Insights report for monthly prices and sales.