North End Explorer

1. 

   Mission 1

   The Oldest Neighborhood

   The North End is the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in Boston — Europeans have lived on this small peninsula since the 1630s, making it nearly 400 years old without a single generation gap in occupancy. It has been home to colonial aristocracy, Irish famine refugees, Eastern European Jewish families, and Southern Italian immigrants who so thoroughly shaped the neighborhood that it is still called Boston's Little Italy today.

2. 

   Mission 2

   Paul Revere's House

   The Paul Revere House on North Square is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston — built around 1680, it was already 95 years old when Paul Revere made his midnight ride in 1775. Revere was not just a silversmith and midnight rider — he was also a copper engraver, a false teeth maker, a church bell caster, and a successful industrialist whose copper rolling mill supplied the copper for the USS Constitution and the State House dome.

3. 

   Mission 3

   One If By Land

   The Old North Church is where sexton Robert Newman hung two lanterns in the steeple on the night of April 18, 1775 to signal that the British were marching to Concord by sea. The signal was meant for patriots in Charlestown across the water, not for Paul Revere himself who was already on his horse. The two lanterns were visible for less than a minute before Newman escaped through a window.

4. 

   Mission 4

   The Italian North End

   Southern Italian immigrants began arriving in the North End in the 1890s and transformed it so completely that by the 1920s it was one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the United States — over 40,000 people living in less than half a square mile. The bakeries, pastry shops, and restaurants that line Hanover and Salem Streets are direct descendants of those original immigrant businesses from over 130 years ago.

5. 

   Mission 5

   Hanover Street

   Hanover Street is the main artery of the North End and one of the great food streets in America — a narrow colonial-era road lined with Italian bakeries, pastry shops, and restaurants. Mike's Pastry and Modern Pastry face each other across the street in a decades-long rivalry that has turned cannoli into a serious neighborhood loyalty test. Paul Revere walked down the same road to reach his house that you are walking down today.

6. 

   Mission 6

   The Molasses Flood

   On January 15, 1919, a 50-foot steel tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses ruptured, sending a wave of molasses 25 feet high and moving at 35 miles per hour through the neighborhood streets. Twenty-one people were killed and 150 were injured. The disaster led to the first engineering regulations requiring that large structures be designed by licensed engineers. On warm summer days North End residents will sometimes claim they can still smell it.

7. 

   Mission 7

   The Feast Days

   Every summer weekend the North End holds outdoor religious festivals honoring the patron saints of the specific southern Italian towns that the neighborhood's founding families came from. The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. A statue of the saint is carried through the streets while crowd members pin money to ribbons — a tradition brought directly from southern Italy over 100 years ago.

8. 

   Mission 8

   Cannoli and Revolution

   Standing in the North End in 2026 you are simultaneously in the neighborhood where the American Revolution was planned and in the neighborhood where Boston's Italian-American community has lived, cooked, worshipped, and celebrated for 130 years. Paul Revere's house is two blocks from the best cannoli in Boston. The church where the lanterns were hung is around the corner from restaurants serving Sunday gravy since the 1920s.

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