Boston Walking Tour: A Guide to All 16 Freedom Trail Sites

Boston is, even now, a somewhat small college town of fewer than 700,000 people. But, despite its size, its story encompasses big events in America’s history. On this Freedom Trail walking tour, I’ll take you to all 16 of its sites including where unarmed citizens were shot dead in a massacre by British soldiers (sort of), where American colonists gathered to toss 92 tons of tea into Boston Harbor (we call it a Party), and where Paul Revere left on his Midnight Ride (before getting arrested).

The tour aptly starts in front of the Boston Common Visitors Center, at the Freedom Trail Starting Point. We’ll head to Brewer Fountain where I’ll tell you how Boston was formed before taking in the impressive Massachusetts State House, and the nearby Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial. We’ll then make our way through Granary Burying Ground where you’ll meet and see the graves of James Otis, John Hancock, Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. Our tour wraps up at Copps Hill Terrace and, on the way there, I’ll point out other sites like the Old State House, Boston’s Old City Hall, and the Old South Meeting House. Along the way, you’ll hear how the persecuted Puritans who founded the British Colonies in the Americas became rebellious, tossing tea into the harbor, raising an armed insurrection, and ultimately expelling the world’s most powerful military. And all while dodging smallpox and bathing once a year, if that!

Among the revolution’s heroes, you’ll learn about:

• Samuel Adams, the one man on whom you could maybe blame the entire American Revolution
• James Otis, a famous orator who famously (but never actually) said “taxation without representation is tyranny”
• John Hancock, a former founding father who, at one time, was the most wanted man in America
• Paul Revere who famously rode through the night to alert the colonial militia of British approach, and whose legacy is immortalized in the Paul Revere Mall and statue – and with a historical marker outside his house where he raised 8 of his 16 kids

On this Boston tour, you’ll also have a chance to:

• Pop into Faneuil Hall, once a town meeting hall where Samuel Adams used to speak, and today a government auditorium with cool old art
• Find out about the list of literary legends linked to the Old Corner Book Store
• Take in important monuments and memorials including the New England Holocaust Memorial, the Boston Irish Famine Memorial, and the Bunker Hill Monument
• See Old North Church, St Stephen’s Catholic Church, King’s Chapel and Park Street Church, and hear the stories linked to these sites of worship
• Bite into history or some tasty grub at Italian bakery Modern Pastry, or the US’s oldest continuously run restaurant, the Union Oyster House

Join me, Daniel Berger-Jones – a stage actor who decided to be a teacher but hated grades, classrooms, and the administration of academia and so instead founded a tour company – and experience the history of this town through my eyes. I can be cheeky, but hopefully never to the point of being annoying, and if nothing else, I hope my enthusiasm for the material will be contagious. Walk the streets of Boston to understand how this country was founded, why it started a revolution, and why Americans are the way that we are today.