Back Bay: A Gilded-Age Walk

Landfill turned into Boston's grandest 19th-century architecture

You can read a century of ambition off the facades of Boston. Six stops over 1.6 miles, about an hour of walking. The story for each stop plays as you arrive, so nothing has to be looked up and nobody has to be followed.

Boston has 50 MassRoam tours and no two cover the same ground. It works as well at eight in the morning as it does at dusk. Stop for coffee, pick it back up.