Walks & Trails · From the Public Garden to the Gardner
Architecture & Art Walk
About 3.75 miles one way, Public Garden to the Gardner Museum · 3 to 4 hours with stops, or a full day with both museums
Access Flat throughout, on paved sidewalks and park paths with curb cuts; the only stairs are indoors (the Gibson House has no elevator, the library, Trinity and both museums do).
Hours and prices Each ticketed stop below carries its hours and admission; the full table is Sights at a Glance.
Back Bay lets you read a century of American building in one straight line, because the neighborhood was built on purpose. From the 1850s on, gravel trains filled the tidal flats behind an old mill dam, starting beside the Public Garden and working west, until in the 1880s upward of 450 acres of new land lay ready, gridded on a Parisian model with Commonwealth Avenue as its grand spine. Builders followed close behind the fill, so the farther west you walk, the later the houses and the Victorian fashions they wear. Next comes Copley Square’s cluster of landmarks, from Richardson’s Trinity Church to New England’s tallest tower, and beyond it, toward the Fenway, Symphony Hall and two great art museums.
The walk is flat throughout, on sidewalks and park paths, and Copley Square at the halfway point is the natural place to break it over two days. Most stops are free to admire from the street, and the Boston Public Library is free to enter; the Museum of Fine Arts, the Gardner, the Gibson House, Trinity Church tours and the Mapparium charge admission; the two museums deserve half a day each, the others an hour or less.
Know before you go
- Start at Arlington station on the Green Line, at Arlington and Boylston streets: it sits right beside Arlington Street Church, two blocks from the Washington statue.
- Finish at the Museum of Fine Arts stop on the Green Line E branch, across Huntington Avenue from the MFA and about five minutes on foot from the Gardner. Inbound trains run back through Copley and Arlington.
- Copley Square is the halfway point and the natural break. The library is free to enter and its courtyard is open to visitors, and Copley station on the Green Line makes it easy to split the walk over two outings.
- Tuesday is the day to avoid: the Museum of Fine Arts and the Gardner both close, and Trinity’s tours pause at noon for the Eucharist. The Gibson House opens for guided tours only, Friday to Sunday at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. (Thursday times vary). Prices and hours print under each stop and in Sights at a Glance.
- The churches here are active congregations, so interiors close during Sunday morning services. The exteriors are the point anyway.
- Lunch: Saltie Girl on Dartmouth Street, between the Mall and Newbury, for tinned fish and lobster rolls at the bar, or the Parish Cafe on Boylston by the start; both are in Back Bay.
Walks & Trails · The map
Architecture & Art Walk
Map key
- 1Boston Public Garden and the George Washington Statue
- 2Arlington Street Church
- 3Emmanuel Church
- 4Gibson House Museum
- 5Commonwealth Avenue Mall
- 6Newbury Street
- 7Trinity Church
- 8Boston Public Library, Central Library
- 9Old South Church
- 10200 Clarendon (the former John Hancock Tower)
- 11Christian Science Plaza: The Mother Church and the Mapparium
- 12Symphony Hall
- 13Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- 14Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Stop by stop
Boston Public Garden and the George Washington Statue
Arlington St at Commonwealth Ave, Public Garden
Hours 6:30 a.m.–11 p.m. · Admission Free
Thomas Ball’s bronze George Washington guards the Public Garden’s Arlington Street gate, lined up with Commonwealth Avenue. Commissioned in 1859, it waited out the Civil War and a bronze shortage before the Ames foundry in Chicopee cast it, and it was dedicated in 1869. Behind it spreads the garden itself, set aside in 1837 as the country’s first public botanical garden and laid out to George Meacham’s prize-winning Victorian plan.
In this book: Boston Public Garden
Arlington Street Church
351 Boylston St (entrance at 20 Arlington St)
Hours Tiffany tours Jun–Oct, Fri–Sat 11 a.m.–3 p.m.; Sun service 11 a.m. · Admission Tours $5; under 12 free with a paying adult
Two blocks south at Boylston Street, Arthur Gilman modeled this church on London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields and topped it with a 190-foot spire. Dedicated in December 1861, it was one of the first public buildings on the new landfill and rests on 999 wooden piles that must stay underwater. If the doors are open, look for the sixteen Tiffany windows installed between 1898 and 1933, believed to be the largest group in any single church.
In this book: Arlington Street Church
Emmanuel Church
15 Newbury St
Hours Sun service 10 a.m. · Admission Free
Walk a block north to Newbury Street. Alexander Rice Esty’s Roxbury puddingstone church of 1861 to 1862 was the first building on the street. Its jewel is the Leslie Lindsey Memorial Chapel, consecrated in 1924 for a young bride of the parish lost with her new husband on the Lusitania; Ninian Comper designed its altar, screen and stained glass. In the main church, find Frederic Crowninshield’s panoramic Pilgrim’s Progress window.
In this book: Emmanuel Church
Gibson House Museum
137 Beacon St
Hours Guided tours Fri–Sun 1, 2 & 3 p.m.; Thursday times vary · Admission $15 adults, $5 ages 6–12
Three blocks north on Beacon Street, Edward Clarke Cabot designed No. 137 as an Italian Renaissance row house of brownstone and red brick; finished in 1860, it was one of the first houses in the Back Bay. The last Gibson in residence, poet Charles Hammond Gibson Jr., set out to preserve it, and since 1957 it has been a museum whose wallpapers, carpets, furniture and kitchen survive as the family left them. Guided tours only.
In this book: Gibson House
Commonwealth Avenue Mall
Commonwealth Ave, Berkeley St to Dartmouth St
Hours 6:30 a.m.–11 p.m. (park hours); open to walk through at any hour · Admission Free
Walk down Berkeley Street and turn west onto the Mall, the 200-foot-wide boulevard Arthur Gilman planned on Parisian lines and built from 1858 into the 1870s. Statues mark the blocks: Martin Milmore’s General John Glover (1875), Henry and Theo Kitson’s Patrick Collins memorial (1908) and, near Dartmouth Street, the 1997 Vendome memorial to nine firefighters killed in 1972. Glance back east for William Rimmer’s Alexander Hamilton of 1865, the Mall’s first statue. At Clarendon Street, stop under First Baptist Church, H. H. Richardson’s first Boston commission, built 1870–72: the frieze high on its tower was modeled by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, later of the Statue of Liberty, and the four angels at its corners, gilded trumpets pointed at the street, earned it the name Church of the Holy Bean Blowers.
In this book: Commonwealth Avenue Mall
Newbury Street
Newbury St, Dartmouth St to Berkeley St · Free
Leave the Mall at Dartmouth Street and turn left onto Newbury for two blocks east. These blocks were built as houses; shops arrived in the early 20th century, some by remodeling the rowhouses, so look up past the signs to the mansard roofs, bay windows and carved stone trim. The building to see is the Church of the Covenant at 67 Newbury, on the Berkeley Street corner: its windows are Tiffany stained glass, and the sanctuary opens to visitors from spring to fall, Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and Sunday 1–3 p.m. Then double back a block to Clarendon.
In this book: Newbury Street
Trinity Church
206 Clarendon St, Copley Square
Hours Tue–Sat 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m. (Wed–Sat Jan–Mar); tours pause Tue 12–12:45 p.m. · Admission $10 adults; $8 seniors, students and Massachusetts residents; under 14 free
Turn right down Clarendon to Copley Square. H. H. Richardson built Trinity from 1872 to 1877, and its rough multicolored stone, round arches and great central tower, modeled on the Old Cathedral of Salamanca, gave the country Richardsonian Romanesque. John La Farge and his team painted the interior in deep color; windows by La Farge, Burne-Jones and Morris followed. Architects voted it America’s finest building in 1885. Visitor tours are ticketed.
In this book: Trinity Church
Boston Public Library, Central Library
700 Boylston St, Copley Square
Hours Mon–Thu 9 a.m.–8 p.m., Fri–Sat 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.–5 p.m. · Admission Free
Across the square, Charles Follen McKim’s library opened in 1895 with the motto Free to All carved at the entrance beside a head of Minerva. Daniel Chester French made the bronze doors. Inside, climb the yellow Siena marble stair past Puvis de Chavannes’s murals, his only work outside France, to Bates Hall’s 50-foot barrel vault, then find Sargent’s Triumph of Religion, Edwin Austin Abbey’s Grail panels and the arcaded courtyard. Philip Johnson’s Boylston Street building of 1972, joined to the back in the same pink Milford granite, doubled the library and holds the lending collections; walk through it to see how a modernist answered McKim.
In this book: Boston Public Library (Central Library, Copley)
Old South Church
645 Boylston St, Copley Square
Hours Mon–Thu 8 a.m.–8 p.m., Fri 8 a.m.–7 p.m., Sat 9 a.m.–4 p.m., Sun 8:30 a.m.–4 p.m. · Admission Free
Across Boylston Street, Cummings and Sears finished the New Old South Church in 1875 in the Northern Italian Gothic John Ruskin preached: Roxbury puddingstone banded with red and buff sandstone, a copper lantern over the crossing and a tall campanile. The first tower leaned on the soft fill and came down in the early 1930s; today’s is a replacement. The architects reportedly had their own faces carved on the portico columns.
In this book: Old South Church
200 Clarendon (the former John Hancock Tower)
200 Clarendon St
Hours Exterior only (private offices; observation deck closed)
Back in the middle of the square, look up. Henry N. Cobb of I. M. Pei and Partners completed the 60-story John Hancock Tower, now 200 Clarendon, in 1976. A slim rhomboid plan, notched end walls and a skin of reflective glass let New England’s tallest building step back from Trinity, which floats in its mirrored facade.
In this book: John Hancock Tower (200 Clarendon)
Christian Science Plaza: The Mother Church and the Mapparium
250 Massachusetts Ave (Mapparium: Mary Baker Eddy Library, 210 Massachusetts Ave)
Hours Tours Tue–Sat 11 a.m. & 3 p.m. (Fri–Sat also 1); Sun 1 & 3 p.m. · Admission Free tours
Leave the square by Huntington Avenue, which runs beneath the Prudential Tower: 52 floors and 749 feet, finished in 1964, the city’s tallest until the Hancock passed it, and since 2023 topped by View Boston, an observation deck and bar on its top three floors, open daily 10 a.m.–10 p.m. from $32 (View Boston). Half a mile on, the granite Romanesque Mother Church of 1894 and its domed 1906 Extension, by Charles Brigham and Solon S. Beman, preside over a 1970s plaza and long reflecting pool by I. M. Pei and Partners with Araldo Cossutta. Inside the Mary Baker Eddy Library, cross a glass bridge through the Mapparium, a three-story stained-glass globe frozen at 1935. Church tours are free; the Mapparium costs $6 for adults (under 18 free), Monday to Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
In this book: First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church)
Symphony Hall
301 Massachusetts Ave, at Huntington Ave
Hours Free public tours (about 1 hour) on select days in the concert season, none in summer; dates at bso.org/visit · Admission Free; concerts ticketed
At Massachusetts and Huntington avenues stands McKim, Mead and White’s Symphony Hall, opened in 1900. Harvard physicist Wallace Clement Sabine calculated its reverberation before it was built, making it one of the first halls shaped by acoustic science, and the shoebox room still ranks among the world’s best. Inside are sixteen replica Greek and Roman statues in niches, and Beethoven is the only composer named on the stage plaques. Free volunteer tours run in season.
In this book: Symphony Hall
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Ave
Hours Wed–Mon 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (Thu–Fri to 10 p.m.); closed Tue · Admission $30 adults; $14 ages 7–17; 6 and under free
Walk southwest on Huntington about half a mile to Guy Lowell’s Beaux-Arts Museum of Fine Arts, opened here in 1909. Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit, the mounted Native American figure with arms flung wide, has held the entrance plaza since 1912. Inside, look up at John Singer Sargent’s rotunda and colonnade murals, installed in 1921 and 1925, then cross to Foster and Partners’ Art of the Americas Wing and Shapiro Family Courtyard, opened in 2010.
In this book: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
25 Evans Way, the Fenway
Hours Mon, Wed–Fri 11 a.m.–5 p.m. (Thu to 9 p.m.); Sat–Sun 10 a.m.–5 p.m. · Admission $25 adults; 17 and under free
Around the MFA’s west end, on Evans Way, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Willard T. Sears, Old South’s co-architect, built her Venetian-style palace from 1899 to 1901, setting windows, columns and balconies bought in Venice, some from the Ca’ d’Oro, around a glass-roofed courtyard in bloom all year. It opened in 1903, and her will fixed the galleries as she arranged them, so empty frames mark the unsolved 1990 theft. Renzo Piano’s wing followed in 2012.
In this book: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum