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 Charlestown is one of the oldest parts of Boston, situated on the opposite side of the Charles River and home to some famous military monuments.
Charlestown was settled in 1629 by John Winthrop and was once the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a separate city to Boston , until 1874 when it was swallowed up by Beantown. Charlestown is set at the head of a peninsula between the Charles River and Mystic River and is connected to downtown Boston by the Charlestown and John Fitzgerald bridges.
The neighbourhood has seen a number of changes over the centuries. Its first colonists were English Puritans, but from the 1840s Charlestown saw a huge and steady influx of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine. Right up to the 1960s, Charlestown was a predominantly Irish American neighbourhood, but regeneration and gentrification around the 1990s has transformed Charlestown into sought after real estate and its historic buildings are home to an increasing number of upper middle class professionals.
But Charlestown’s place in history lies in the days of the American Revolution. Paul Revere rode through Charlestown on his midnight ride and The Warren Tavern in the neighbourhood claims to have been one of his favourite haunts. On June 17 1775, Charlestown witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, when a handful of American colonists fought it out with an overwhelming British force and American Colonel William Prescott coined the famous phrase, “Don’t shoot til you see the whites of their eyes’.
Marking this spot on Breed’s Hill (where the battle actually took place) above the rooftops of Charlestown is the Bunker Hill Monument to commemorate this iconic moment of American resistance and explain the confusion between the two hills.
The Bunker Hill Monument is the final location on the Freedom Trail , which also leads to the Charlestown Navy Yard, where you’ll find the oldest commissioned battleship in the world: the USS Constitution. Nicknamed ‘Old Ironsides’, the Constitution was built in 1812 and fought over 40 battles without losing a single one.
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