6 Best Sights in Boston, Massachusetts

This venerable institution is a handsome temple to reading and a valuable research library, as well as an art gallery of sorts, and you don't need a library card to enjoy it. At the main entrance hall of the 1895 Renaissance Revival building, take in the immense stone lions by Louis St. Gaudens, the vaulted ceiling, and the marble staircase. The corridor at the top of the stairs leads to Bates Hall, one of Boston's most sumptuous interior spaces. This is the main reading room, 218 feet long with a barrel vault ceiling 50 feet high. The murals at the head of the staircase, depicting the nine muses, are the work of the French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes; those in the room to the right are Edwin Austin Abbey's interpretations of the Holy Grail legend. Upstairs, in the public areas, is John Singer Sargent's mural series Triumph of Religion. The library offers free art and architecture tours. The McKim building contains a Renaissance-style courtyard inspired by Rome's Palazzo della Cancelleria. A covered arcade furnished with chairs rings a fountain; you can bring books or lunch into the peaceful courtyard.

The library-museum is both a center for serious scholarship and a focus for Boston's nostalgia for her native son. The stark, white building (another modernist monument designed by I. M. Pei) at this Dorchester Bay–enclosed site pays homage to the life and presidency of John F. Kennedy, as well as to members of his family, including his wife, Jacqueline, and brother Robert.

The library is the official repository of JFK's presidential papers and displays re-creations of his desk in the Oval Office and of the television studio in which he debated Richard Nixon in the 1960 election. Permanent exhibits focus on his life before politics, the 1960 Presidential election, the Peace Corps, and the U.S. space program (currently under renovation). Two theaters show films about JFK's life. There's also a permanent display on the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The facility also includes a store and a small café.

One of the oldest libraries in the country, the Athenæum was founded in 1807 from the seeds sown by the Anthology Club (headed by Ralph Waldo Emerson's father). It moved to its imposing, present-day quarters—modeled after Palladio's Palazzo da Porta Festa in Vicenza, Italy—in 1849. Membership in this cathedral of scholarship has been passed down for generations, but the Athenæum is open in part to the public. The first floor houses an art gallery with rotating exhibits, marble busts, porcelain vases, lush oil paintings, and books. The children's room features secluded nooks overlooking the Granary Burying Ground. To see one of the most marvelous sights in Boston academe, take a guided tour, which visits the fifth-floor Reading Room. Among the Athenæum's holdings are most of George Washington's private library, as well as King's Chapel Library, sent from England by William III in 1698. With a nod to the Information Age, an online catalog contains records for more than 600,000 volumes.

One of the largest single collections by and about an American woman is housed at this library, located on the Christian Science Plaza. The library also includes two floors of exhibits, which celebrate the power of ideas and provide context to the life and achievements of Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910).

The library is also home to the fascinating Mapparium, a huge stained-glass globe whose 30-foot interior can be traversed on a footbridge, where you can experience a unique sound-and-light show while viewing an accurate representation of the world from 1935. The Hall of Ideas showcases quotes from the world's greatest thinkers, which travel around the room and through a virtual fountain. In the Quest Gallery, explore how Mary Baker Eddy founded a church and a college, and at the age of 87, launched the Christian Science Monitor newspaper.

The first historical society in the United States (founded in 1791) has paintings, a library, and a 12-million-piece manuscript collection from 17th-century New England to the present. Among these manuscripts are the Adams Family Papers, which comprise more than 300,000 pages from the letters and diaries of generations of the Adams family, including papers from John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Casual visitors are welcome, but if you'd like to examine the papers within the library in depth, call ahead. The Society also offers a variety of programs and special exhibits.

Are you related to Miles Standish or Priscilla Alden? The answer may lie here. If your ancestors were pedigreed New Englanders—or if you're just interested in genealogical research of any kind—you can trace your family tree with the help of the society's collections. The society dates from 1845, and is the oldest genealogical organization in the country.