Walks & Trails
The Harborwalk
About 2.75 miles one way, North End to the Seaport, including the walks out along the wharves · About 1 hour 15 minutes of walking; 2 to 3 hours with stops
Access Level and paved from end to end, with ramps wherever the boardwalks change height; the ICA’s grandstand steps have a ramped path beside them. The easiest long walk in the book, and the windiest.
Hours and prices Each ticketed stop below carries its hours and admission; the full table is Sights at a Glance.
The Harborwalk gives the one view of Boston the streets never do: the city seen from its own water’s edge. For decades the elevated Central Artery cut downtown off from the harbor; the Harborwalk is the city’s answer, a public path that now runs along about 43 of Boston’s 47 miles of shoreline, from Constitution Beach in East Boston through Charlestown, the North End, downtown, the Seaport and South Boston to the Neponset River in Dorchester. It took shape in the city’s 1984 Harborpark plan and has been built ever since one waterfront parcel at a time, which is why it changes character every few hundred feet, from granite wharves to hotel plazas to boardwalks.
The legal muscle is far older. Massachusetts has treated the shore as a public trust since the Colonial Ordinances of the 1640s, and Chapter 91, the Public Waterfront Act of 1866, is the nation’s oldest waterways law. Build on filled tidelands and you owe the public something back; Boston’s Harborpark zoning makes that a setback from the water, built out as a path open to all. That is why a hotel plaza, a courthouse lawn and a museum’s front steps are all yours to walk through.
Know before you go
- Start from Haymarket (Orange and Green Lines) or North Station, each about half a mile from Langone Park. Aquarium on the Blue Line sits mid-route by Long Wharf. Finish at Courthouse or World Trade Center, Silver Line stops a few blocks from Pier 4 with direct service back to South Station.
- Boats beat backtracking. The MBTA’s Charlestown ferry ($2.40 one way) runs between Long Wharf and the Navy Yard, seasonal Boston Harbor Islands ferries ($24.95 adults) leave from Long Wharf North, and water taxis work Rowes Wharf and the Fan Pier marina.
- The harbor edge runs cooler and windier than the streets a block inland, and the Seaport piers are open to the water on three sides. Bring a layer even in summer and expect slick boardwalks in winter.
- Chapter 91 requires many waterfront buildings to keep public restrooms, open in business hours: the Long Wharf South ferry terminal, the Marriott Long Wharf, the Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf, Independence Wharf and Atlantic Wharf among them.
- The Harborwalk itself is free and open to everyone. Only the museums and boats along it charge: museum prices print under each stop, and the boat fares are above.
Walks & Trails · The map
The Harborwalk
Stop by stop
Langone Park and Puopolo Playground
529 Commercial St, North End · Free
Begin at the North End’s harborside ballfields on Commercial Street. On January 15, 1919, a 50-foot molasses tank on this stretch of the street burst, and the wave that followed killed 21 people; a small plaque in the park remembers them. The city rebuilt the park in 2021, raising the ground as much as seven feet against rising seas and lifting the Harborwalk onto an elevated boardwalk at the water’s edge.
Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park
110 Atlantic Ave, at Long Wharf
Hours 6 a.m.–11:30 p.m. (city park hours) · Admission Free
Work south along Commercial Street and the wharf edges, past Battery, Lewis and Commercial wharves, to the park laid out on filled land in the 1970s. Its long timber trellis, heavy with wisteria in late spring, shades a promenade that looks straight across the harbor toward the airport, and a rose garden honors Rose Kennedy. Sycamores screen out Atlantic Avenue, and the Greenway runs just across the street.
Long Wharf
Long Wharf, off Atlantic Ave at State St · Free
Begun around 1710, Long Wharf once pushed 1,586 feet into the harbor, long enough for 50 ships to tie up and unload straight into its warehouses. Landfill has since claimed much of that length, but the granite Custom House Block of 1848 still stands, and the wharf is a National Historic Landmark. Walk out to the end for open water, then check the departure boards: harbor ferries leave from both sides.
In this book: Long Wharf
New England Aquarium, Central Wharf
1 Central Wharf, off Atlantic Ave
Hours Mon–Fri 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sat–Sun 9 a.m.–6 p.m. (fall) · Admission $39.95 adults; $30.95 ages 3–11; 2 and under free
The New England Aquarium opened on Central Wharf on June 20, 1969, and its Giant Ocean Tank still anchors the building. Its best-known residents, the Atlantic harbor seals, lived outdoors on the front plaza, long a free show from the Harborwalk; that habitat is being rebuilt, and until it reopens the seals are off view. Whale watch boats and the Simons Theatre, a giant-screen 3D cinema, share the wharf.
In this book: New England Aquarium
Rowes Wharf
70 Rowes Wharf, off Atlantic Ave · Free
Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed Rowes Wharf, finished in 1987, around a monumental arch that frames the harbor from Atlantic Avenue. Walk through it: the plaza beyond is public, water taxis and boats work the docks, and on summer evenings the Boston Harbor Hotel brings live music to the wharf through Summer in the City, a series now in its third decade.
Fort Point Channel and the Tea Party Ships
306 Congress St, on the Congress Street Bridge
Hours Daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (tours); closed Thanksgiving, Christmas · Admission From $36 adults
Round the corner at the mouth of Fort Point Channel and follow its edge past Independence Wharf and Atlantic Wharf to the Congress Street Bridge. Tied up here are full-size replicas of the Beaver and the Eleanor, two of the ships emptied of their tea on December 16, 1773. The museum floats on the same water where the protest happened and displays the Robinson Tea Chest, one of only two known to survive the night, and the only one in Boston. Lunch is a block back on Atlantic Avenue at James Hook & Co., the lobster shack at the mouth of the channel; see Wharf District.
In this book: Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum
Hood Milk Bottle and Martin’s Park
308 Congress St, Fort Point
Admission Free
Across the bridge stands the 40-foot Hood Milk Bottle, built in 1934 by Arthur Gagner of Taunton as a roadside ice cream stand and floated across the harbor on a barge in 1977 to join the Boston Children’s Museum. It still does its job: a window sells soft-serve and hot dogs through the warm months, cash only. Just north, Martin’s Park opened in 2019 in memory of Martin Richard, the youngest victim of the Marathon bombings, with an inclusive playground on the channel’s edge.
In this book: Martin’s Park
Moakley Courthouse Harborpark
1 Courthouse Way, off Seaport Blvd
Hours Mon–Fri 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. (public counter); photo ID required · Admission Free
Follow the channel north to Seaport Boulevard and out to the federal courthouse Henry Cobb designed for Fan Pier, completed in 1998. Its curved glass wall faces the downtown skyline. On weekdays, with photo ID, anyone can walk in: the public halls hold Ellsworth Kelly’s The Boston Panels, 21 bright single-color panels hung through seven spaces as one artwork. The landscaped park along the waterfront is open to all and is the calmest place on the walk to sit and look back at the city.
Fan Pier
Fan Pier Blvd at Marina Park Dr · Free
Past the courthouse, the Harborwalk loops the edge of Fan Pier, a 21-acre spread of offices, condos and restaurants wrapped around a marina where water taxis share the docks with private yachts. Along the way, look for the lookout steps at the water’s edge, a waterfall and a fire pit, all good excuses to pause before the art museum at the pier’s far end.
Institute of Contemporary Art
25 Harbor Shore Dr, Seaport
Hours Tue–Wed & Sat–Sun 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thu–Fri 10 a.m.–9 p.m. (to 5 p.m. on the first Friday of the month) · Admission $20 adults; 18 and under free; free Thu 5–9 p.m.
The Institute of Contemporary Art began in 1936 as the Boston Museum of Modern Art and moved here in 2006, into a Diller Scofidio + Renfro building designed around the Harborwalk. The public boardwalk climbs into broad steps facing the water, and the top-floor galleries cantilever out over the path, leaving a sheltered stretch underneath. The galleries charge admission; the steps and the view are free.
In this book: Institute of Contemporary Art (The ICA)
Pier 4
Pier 4 Blvd off Seaport Blvd · Free
Finish on Pier 4, where Anthony’s Pier 4, the restaurant, once stood. The boardwalk wrapping the pier opened in 2019 with sea steps built to go partly underwater at high tide, so you stand at the harbor’s own level as it rises and falls. At the tip an acre of lawn reaches into the water; sit on it, and the whole skyline you have walked beneath lines up behind you, with the ferries you could have taken crossing in front.
More of the Harborwalk
- Charlestown Navy Yard: the Harborwalk threads the old Navy piers past USS Constitution and the destroyer USS Cassin Young, and the MBTA ferry from Long Wharf drops you right there.
- East Boston: Piers Park, the Massport park that opened on Marginal Street in 1995, reaches out into the harbor for some of the best skyline views in the city, a short walk from Maverick on the Blue Line.
- South Boston: follow Day Boulevard past the beaches to Castle Island, where paths ring Pleasure Bay and circle the granite walls of Fort Independence.
- Dorchester: the Harborwalk loops Columbia Point past the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and UMass Boston, with the islands and the downtown towers in one view.