8 Best Sights in Government Center, Boston

Faneuil Hall (pronounced Fan-yoo'uhl or Fan-yuhl) was erected in 1742, the gift of wealthy merchant Peter Faneuil, who wanted the hall to serve as both a place for town meetings and a public market. It burned in 1761 and was immediately reconstructed according to the original plan of its designer, the Scottish portrait painter John Smibert (who lies in the Granary Burying Ground). In 1763 the political leader James Otis helped inaugurate the era that culminated in American independence when he dedicated the rebuilt hall to the cause of liberty.

In 1772 Samuel Adams stood here and first suggested that Massachusetts and the other colonies organize a Committee of Correspondence to maintain semiclandestine lines of communication in the face of hardening British repression. In later years the hall again lived up to Otis's dedication when the abolitionists Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner pleaded for support from its podium. The tradition continues to this day: in presidential-election years the hall is the site of debates between contenders in the Massachusetts primary.

Faneuil Hall was substantially enlarged and remodeled in 1805 according to a Greek Revival design of the noted architect Charles Bulfinch; this is the building you see today. Its purposes remain the same: the balconied Great Hall is available to citizens' groups on presentation of a request signed by a required number of responsible parties; it also plays host to regular concerts.

Inside Faneuil Hall are dozens of paintings of famous Americans, including the mural Webster's Reply to Hayne and Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington at Dorchester Heights. Park rangers give informational talks about the history and importance of Faneuil Hall every half hour. There are interactive displays about Boston sights, and National Park Service rangers at the visitor center on the first floor can provide maps and other information.

On the building's top floors are the headquarters and museum and library of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, which is free to visit (but a donation is welcome). Founded in 1638, it's the oldest militia in the Western Hemisphere, and the third-oldest in the world, after the Swiss Guard and the Honourable Artillery Company of London. The museum is open Wednesday through Friday from 11 am to 3 pm.

When such men as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster debated the future of the Republic here, the fragrances of bacon and snuff—sold by merchants in Quincy Market across the road—greeted their noses. Today the aroma of coffee wafts through the hall from a snack bar. The shops at ground level sell New England bric-a-brac. This is Freedom Trail stop 11.

Quincy Market, also known as Faneuil Hall Marketplace, is not everyone's cup of tea; some people prefer grit to polish, and disdain the shiny cafés and boutiques. But there's no denying that this pioneer effort at urban recycling set the tone for many similar projects throughout the country, and that it has brought tremendous vitality to a once-tired corner of Boston. Quincy Market attracts huge crowds of tourists and locals throughout the year. In the early ’70s, demolition was a distinct possibility for the decrepit buildings. Fortunately, with the participation of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, architect Benjamin Thompson planned a renovation of Quincy Market, and the Rouse Corporation of Baltimore undertook its restoration, which was completed in 1976. Try to look beyond the shop windows to the grand design of the market buildings themselves; they represent a vision of the market as urban centerpiece, an idea whose time has certainly come again.

The market consists of three block-long annexes: Quincy Market, North Market, and South Market, each 535 feet long and across a plaza from Faneuil Hall. The structures were designed in 1826 by Alexander Parris as part of a public-works project instituted by Boston's second mayor, Josiah Quincy, to alleviate the cramped conditions of Faneuil Hall and clean up the refuse that collected in Town Dock, the pond behind it. The central structure, made of granite, with a Doric colonnade at either end and topped by a classical dome and rotunda, has kept its traditional market-stall layout, but the stalls now purvey international and specialty foods: sushi, frozen yogurt, bagels, calzones, sausage-on-a-stick, Chinese noodles, barbecue, and baklava, plus all the boutique chocolate-chip cookies your heart desires.

In between Quincy Market and South Market colonnades, be sure to stop and take a seat next to the sculpture of legendary Boston Celtics coach, Red Auerbach, smoking one of his famous stogies.

Along the arcades on either side of the Central Market are vendors selling sweatshirts, photographs of Boston, and arts and crafts—some schlocky, some not—alongside a couple of patioed bars and restaurants, including the new Sam Adams Brewery (perfectly poised within sight of his famous statue). The North and South markets house a mixture of chain stores and specialty boutiques.

Faneuil Hall provides a splash of color; during the winter holidays, trees along the cobblestone walks are strung with thousands of sparkling lights and the interior Quincy Market rotunda is home to a 20-foot Christmas tree. In summer up to 50,000 people a day descend on the market; the outdoor cafés are an excellent spot to watch the hordes if you can find a seat. Year-round the pedestrian walkways draw street performers, and rings of strollers form around magicians and musicians.

Between North and Hanover Streets, near the Haymarket, lies the Blackstone Block, now visited mostly for its culinary landmark, the Union Oyster House. Named for one of Boston's first settlers, William Blaxton, or Blackstone, it's the city's oldest commercial block, for decades dominated by the butcher trade. As a tiny remnant of Old Boston, the Blackstone Block remains the city's "family attic"—to use the winning metaphor of critic Donlyn Lyndon: more than three centuries of architecture are on view, ranging from the 18th-century Capen House to the modern Bostonian hotel. A colonial-period warren of winding lanes surrounds the block.

Facing the Blackstone Block, in tiny Union Park, framed by Congress Street and Dock Square, are two bronze figures, one seated on a bench and the other standing eye-to-eye with passersby. Both represent James Michael Curley, the quintessential Boston pol and a questionable role model for urban bosses. It's just as well that he has no pedestal. Also known as "the Rascal King" or "the Mayor of the Poor," and dramatized by Spencer Tracy in The Last Hurrah (1958), the charismatic Curley was beloved by the city's dominant working-class Irish for bringing them libraries, hospitals, bathhouses, and other public-works projects. His career got off to a promising start in 1903, when he ran—and won—a campaign for alderman from the Charles Street Jail, where he was serving time for taking someone else's civil-service exam.

Over the next 50 years he dominated Boston politics, serving four nonconsecutive terms as mayor, one term as governor, and four terms as congressman. No one seemed to mind the slight glitch created when his office moved, in 1946, to the federal penitentiary, where he served five months of a 6- to 18-month sentence for mail fraud: he was pardoned by President Truman and returned to his people a hero.

A 7,400-square-foot National Park Service visitor center at Faneuil Hall features history exhibits, a film-screening area, and a bookstore. It's the starting point for NPS rangers' two different 60-minute Freedom Trail tours and other talks; there's a sister site at Charlestown's Navy Yard. It's open daily from 9 to 4. Other Boston NPS sights include the Boston African American National Historic Site on Beacon Hill, home to guided tours of the Black Heritage Trail, and the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, with trails, forts, wildlife, and camping on 34 islands.

Open year-round, the indoor Boston Public Market offers a great place to grab a sandwich, sample local foods, and even pick up a souvenir. The New England–centric marketplace has 30 vendors, selling everything from fresh herbs and fruit to meat and seafood. Everything sold at the market is produced or originates in New England. There’s also a food demonstration kitchen, where visitors might be able to catch a live cooking class (with samples). The Kids’ Nook is a designated area to gather and play, and there are kids activities throughout the week.

Over the years, various plans—involving gardens, restaurants, music, and hotels—have been floated to make this a more people-friendly site. Possibly the only thing that would ameliorate Bostonians' collective distaste for the chilly Government Center is tearing it down. Locals are getting their wish, as the entire City Hall Plaza area (one of the largest civil spaces in Boston) is now in the middle of a several-stage, multiyear makeover. City Hall itself is an upside-down ziggurat design on a brutalist redbrick plaza that is being torn up and revamped to create a more aesthetically pleasing array of tree canopies, terraces, and improved public spaces. Once this is complete, the plaza will return as the site of many of the city's famed festivals, rallies, and outdoor concerts.

Loud, self-promoting vendors pack this exuberant maze of a marketplace at Marshall and Blackstone Streets on Friday and Saturday from dawn to dusk (most vendors are usually gone by 5). As they have since 1829, pushcart vendors hawk fruits and vegetables against a backdrop of fish, meat, and cheese shops. The accumulation of debris left every evening has been celebrated in a whimsical 1976 public-arts project—Mags Harries's Asaroton, a Greek word meaning "unswept floors," a term used for Roman floor mosaics depicting banquet debris—consisting of bronze fruit peels and other detritus smashed into pavement. Another Harries piece, a bronze depiction of a gathering of stray gloves, tumbles down between the escalators in the Porter Square T station in Cambridge. At Creek Square, near the Haymarket, is the Boston Stone. Set into a brick wall, this was allegedly a marker used as milepost zero in measuring distances from Boston.

Located at the north end of Union Park, the Holocaust Memorial is the work of Stanley Saitowitz, whose design was selected through an international competition; the finished memorial was dedicated in 1995. During the day the six 50-foot-high glass-and-steel towers seem at odds with the 18th-century streetscape of Blackstone Square behind it; at night, they glow like ghosts while manufactured steam from grates in the granite base makes for a particularly haunting scene. Recollections by Holocaust survivors are set into the glass-and-granite walls; the upper levels of the towers are etched with 6 million numbers in random sequence, symbolizing the Jewish victims of the Nazi horror.