Back Bay (Boston)

Filled-in marshland turned into Boston's most elegant grid — brownstones, a great square, and a shopping street. Copley Square is the heart of it.

Trinity Church — H.H. Richardson's masterpiece (1872–77), the birthplace of "Richardsonian Romanesque," a style that shaped American architecture for decades. Voted the finest building in the U.S. by architects in 1885. The interior murals by John La Farge cover over 21,500 square feet, and the whole thing sits on nearly 4,500 wooden piles driven into the old Back Bay marsh.

Boston Public Library (McKim Building) — Completed 1895, designed by Charles Follen McKim as a deliberate "palace for the people" — grand like a European library, but free and open to all. It faces Trinity Church across the square.

Old South Church (New Old South) — The Gothic building with rainbow flags and a "God Loves Trans People" banner is a longstanding LGBTQ-affirming congregation. It's the same original parish as the colonial-era Old South Meeting House downtown, but a distinct, later building; the congregation moved to Back Bay in 1875.

Newbury Street — Brownstone rowhouses turned into shops (Diptyque, Wacoal, ice cream stands) — the classic Back Bay retail strip.

Cacao (nuts · chocolate · coffee) — My sweet stop here; the hot chocolate and sweets were great. It was founded by Leonardo Baez and Perla Rosario in 2019, and the chocolate side traces back to Perla's family cacao farm in the Dominican Republic — which is where the name comes from.