2 Best Sights in Boston, Massachusetts

The mall that extends down the middle of the Back Bay's Commonwealth Avenue, which serves as the green link between the Public Garden and the public parks system, is studded with statuary. One of the most interesting memorials, at the Exeter Street intersection, is a portrayal of naval historian and author Samuel Eliot Morison seated on a rock as if he were peering out to sea. The Boston Women's Memorial, installed in 2003, sculpted by Meredith Bergmann, is between Fairfield and Gloucester Streets. Statues of Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley celebrate the progressive ideas of these three women and their contributions to Boston's history.

A dramatic and personal memorial near Dartmouth Street is the Vendome Hotel Fire Memorial, dedicated to the nine firemen who died in a 1972 blaze at the Back Bay's Vendome Hotel, which, now office space, is across the street. The curved black-granite block, 29 feet long and waist high, is etched with the names of the dead. A bronze cast of a fireman's coat and hat is draped over the granite.

Near the corner of Beacon and Arlington Streets, the recently redone Arthur Fiedler Footbridge crosses Storrow Drive to the 3-mile-long Esplanade and the Hatch Memorial Shell. The free concerts here in summer include the Boston Pops' immensely popular televised July 4 performance. For shows like this, Bostonians haul lawn chairs and blankets to the lawn in front of the shell; bring a takeout lunch from a nearby restaurant, find an empty spot—no mean feat, so come early—and you'll feel right at home. An impressive stone bust of the late maestro Arthur Fiedler watches over the walkers, joggers, picnickers, and sunbathers who fill the Esplanade's paths on pleasant days. Here, too, is the turn-of-the-20th-century Union Boat Club Boathouse, headquarters for the country's oldest private rowing club. You can also access the park by crossing the Frances Appleton Pedestrian Bridge linking the Beacon Hill neighborhood to the Esplanade.