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Cambridge is a city of about 120,000 people across the Charles River from Boston, home to two of the most famous universities in the world. Founded in 1630 as Newtowne, it was renamed Cambridge after the English university town when Harvard College was founded here in 1636, the first college in America. George Washington took command of the Continental Army on Cambridge Common in 1775.
Harvard Square is the city's best-known neighborhood, with Harvard Yard's red-brick halls, bookshops, cafes and street performers. Down the river, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology fills Kendall Square and Cambridge's waterfront with innovative architecture, including Frank Gehry's Stata Center and the sponge-like Simmons Hall, while the area has become one of the world's leading biotech hubs.
Cambridge is full of museums and history. The Harvard Art Museums, the Peabody Museum and the Harvard Museum of Natural History, with its famous glass flowers, sit on campus, and the MIT Museum showcases science and robotics. The Longfellow House, where Washington had his headquarters, Mount Auburn Cemetery's gardens and Fresh Pond reservation add quieter corners.
The busy square at the heart of Cambridge, with bookstores, cafes, street performers and the gates into Harvard Yard, the university's historic core with red-brick halls and the John Harvard statue. Student-led campus tours start nearby. Take the Red Line to Harvard station.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus along the Charles River, known for the Great Dome, Killian Court, the Infinite Corridor and modern buildings by Frank Gehry and others, plus outdoor sculptures. You can walk the grounds freely; the free public art map helps you find the works.
Cambridge's tech and biotech hub next to MIT, packed with research labs, startups, restaurants and a rooftop garden. It is lively on weekdays with food trucks and cafes, and the area around Kendall/MIT Red Line station is a good base for exploring the MIT side of the city.
Three museums under one Renzo Piano roof: the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger and Arthur M. Sackler, with Western art from the Middle Ages to today, Germanic modernism and Asian and Islamic art. Admission has been free in recent years. Allow two hours and check for special exhibitions.
A museum famous for the Glass Flowers, over 4,000 lifelike glass models of plants, plus mineral galleries, dinosaur and whale skeletons and regional wildlife dioramas. A ticket also covers the connected Peabody Museum. Plan two hours; it is good for kids on rainy days.
One of the oldest anthropology museums in the world, attached to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, with Native American, Mesoamerican and Pacific collections including Maya casts and totem poles. Entry is included with the natural history museum ticket.
MIT's public museum in Kendall Square, reopened in a new building in 2022, with exhibits on robotics, artificial intelligence, holography, kinetic sculptures by Arthur Ganson and MIT inventions. It has hands-on labs and is fun for teens and adults; buy timed tickets online.
A Georgian mansion on Brattle Street that served as George Washington's headquarters in 1775-76 and later was home to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for almost 50 years. Now a National Historic Site with free ranger tours in season and lovely formal gardens.
America's first garden cemetery, founded in 1831 on the Cambridge-Watertown line, with rolling hills, ponds, rare trees and graves of figures like Longfellow and Mary Baker Eddy. Climb Washington Tower for views of Boston. It is a top spot for birding during spring migration.
A historic public park next to Harvard Square where George Washington is said to have taken command of the Continental Army in 1775. It has a Civil War memorial, a large playground and open lawns. It is a good spot to rest between visits to Harvard and Brattle Street.
A 162-acre park around Cambridge's drinking water reservoir with a 2.25-mile paved loop popular with walkers, runners and dog owners, plus woods, meadows and small ponds. Swimming and boating are not allowed. It is near Alewife station and has a public golf course next door.
A leading theater company based at Harvard's Loeb Drama Center on Brattle Street, known for premiering shows that later went to Broadway, such as Jagged Little Pill and Waitress. Productions range from new musicals to classics. Book ahead; student discounts are offered.
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