Itinerary in New England, among historic homes, parks, and gardens

10-Day Itinerary in New England

In New England, there is a world of gardens in historic residences and museums, in towns and villages, in nature reserves and protected areas. You stroll through arboretums and greenhouses, along the coast and open fields and meadows, in woodland areas and luxury resorts. In this northeastern region of the United States, there are native, rare, and exotic plants, flowers, bulbs, and trees, well-kept meadows, fantastic color combinations, ornamental structures, and paths. There are secret gardens, tropical, orchid gardens and with little houses, vegetable gardens and stone and hillside gardens, Japanese-style gardens with stunning locations.

The largest landscape collection of native plants in the northeastern United States is found here, as well as one of the country’s oldest botanical gardens. Autumn is ideal for discovering small and large natural treasures of New England, kissed by the kaleidoscopic atmospheres of the Indian Summer colors. It is suggested to undertake the journey no later than the first half of October to capture the autumn palette and colors that degrade from north to south of the region over a period starting from mid-September and lasting until the end of October. Obviously, in the northern part of New England the “Indian Summer” starts earlier, while in the southern part it can be enjoyed even in early November. Our itinerary in New England begins in Boston. Don’t forget to prepare in advance the documents for traveling to the United States.

1st stop: BOSTON / arrival and walk at the Boston Public Garden

The Boston Public Garden is in the heart of the city, adjacent to the oldest public park in America, the Boston Common. Together these two parks constitute the northern side of the Emerald Necklace, the “Emerald Necklace,” a long strip of parks designed by the famous American park and garden architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The Public Garden connects to the south with Boylston Street, to the west with Arlington Street, to the north with Beacon Street, and to the east with Charles Street, which divides the Public Garden from the Boston Common. The park contains numerous plants and a pond of over one and a half hectares on which from April to the end of October sail swan-shaped boats – Swan Boat – a famous attraction in Boston, guided tours circling the lake. Another characteristic is the numerous bronze statues adorning the park, among which Make Way for Ducklings (Make Way for Ducklings) is a tribute to a famous children’s tale. 

BOSTON: visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Arnold Arboretum

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boston is the beautiful house-museum at Fenway Court designed by Isabella Stewart Gardner, Bostonian magnate and billionaire, who collected exquisite works over several years of travel in Europe and Asia. The residence in Venetian Renaissance style preserves paintings by El Greco, Tiziano, Vermeer, Sargent, just to name a few painters. There are over 2,500 art specimens, including the first Matisse painting acquired by an American museum. Gardner was a controversial and transversal figure in Boston at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, as she frequented enlightened personalities, eccentric artists, was a muse and patron, as well as the host of a salon “outside puritan norms”. In 2012, the new wing of the museum designed by architect Renzo Piano was inaugurated: an addition to the Boston Fenway Cultural District, where the famous Museum of Fine Arts is also located.

The day continues with a visit to the ARNOLD ARBORETUM in the beautiful Jamaica Plain neighborhood – 107 hectares that are part of the Boston Emerald Necklace park system designed at the end of the 1800s. The arboretum is the largest research center on plants with about 14,000 trees belonging to 5,000 classifications. The Visitor Center has maps and brochures for self-guided tours, exhibitions on the Arboretum and its plants, seasonal displays, a shop with books and educational items for children and adults, activities for children, and restrooms. The Arboretum is open year-round from dawn to dusk with free access. It is precisely in this garden that the carriage scene of the Parisian walk was filmed in the movie Little Women (2019) directed by Greta Gerwig.

At Boston one should dedicate at least three days to explore its numerous squares, ancient streets, neighborhoods with finely decorated flower beds, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, or South End. Commonwealth Avenue is a succession of magnolias and delightful historical buildings, dotted with meticulously kept gardens. It is a surprise in every season of the year. Don’t miss the walk along the innovative Rose Kennedy Greenway that borders the Harbor Walk, on the harborfront. This sinuous long green area is a most interesting and inviting blend of various plantings, interspersed with vegetable gardens, decorated with art installations and lights, benches and lamp posts, fountains, and water features. It’s the perfect urban solution that replaces the vehicle traffic lanes (now all underground) allowing citizens and visitors a “friendly” walk, as pleasant as possible during spring bloom or in autumn.

2nd stop: coast north of Boston, northern Massachusetts side, Ipswich area

Visit to the estate Castle Hill on the Crane Estate

Castle Hill refers to a “drumlin” (a particular type of hill shaped like a whale’s back or a “donkey’s back”) of 66 hectares surrounded by sea and salt marsh or also to the villa on the hill. Both are part of the Crane Estate of 849 hectares located on Argilla Road in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The former summer home of the Richard T. Crane, Jr. family, includes a historic mansion, 21 buildings, and a landscape overlooking Ipswich Bay, along the north coast of Boston.

The property’s name derives from the namesake Ipswich promontory in England, from which the founding pilgrims of the Massachusetts Bay Colony came. Centuries before becoming the opulent summer residence of one of America’s wealthiest families, Castle Hill was known to the native Indians who called it “Agawam“, referring to the abundant fish catch. In the early 1880s, J. B. Brown transformed Castle Hill Farm from farmland into a true “gentleman’s farm,” improving its roads, park, and elevating the rural house into an elegant cottage that today is The Inn at Castle Hill. It was on this estate that many scenes from the film The Witches of Eastwick (1987) directed by George Miller, based on the novel by John Updike starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer, were filmed.

Richard T. Crane, Jr. bought the property in 1910 and transformed Castle Hill as an example of the “American Country Place Era” with its farm and property buildings, park, gardens, and various natural areas. The Crane family commissioned work from some of the most famous mansion and garden architects of the period. The first residence built on top of the Castle Hill hill, a Renaissance Italian villa revival, was designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, then replaced in 1928 by the 59-room Stuart-style mansion designed by architect David Adler. The residence is furnished with period furniture. Castle Hill also hosts a wide variety of wildlife typical of northeastern Massachusetts forests. Deer, foxes, wild turkeys, and a multitude of songbirds can be observed along the numerous Castle Hill trails. Moreover, Castle Hill is home to many pairs of large horned owls and red-tailed hawks that nest here. Thanks to its Atlantic Ocean location and proximity to Crane Beach, rare species such as vultures and migrating hawks, and occasionally bald eagles, can be spotted. It is suggested to lunch at The Inn at Castle Hill, making sure to book in advance.

Visit to the Zimmerman House

About 70 km northwards, you reach the state of New Hampshire and the town of Manchester. Upon arrival: visit the Zimmerman House, a historic home located at 223 Heather Street and built in 1951; it is the first of two houses in New Hampshire designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and one of the Prairie School models in the northeastern United States. The house is now owned by the famous Currier Museum of Art, which offers tours of the building listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The home was created for clients Dr. Isadore and Lucille Zimmerman.

Wright redesigned the house around a rock placed right at the entrance. His design extended to include all interior furnishings, furniture as well as the mailbox, and also specified the placement of plants for the garden. The visit starts from the Museum and continues with the house, making sure you have booked the visit in advance. Private tours are also available with at least two weeks’ prior reservation.

3rd stop at Cornish, New Hampshire

(135 km)

Cornish

The residence in Cornish belonged to the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and includes delightful gardens and walking paths. Cornish is a village of about 1,600 inhabitants along the banks of the Connecticut River in Sullivan County. The covered bridges of Cornish are a true record as no other place in New Hampshire can boast as many. The most notable is the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge, which spans the two banks of the Connecticut River and is the longest two-span covered bridge in the world, built in 1866 at a cost of $9,000: 140 meters, a true connection between New Hampshire and Vermont. Must not be missed are the Blacksmith Shop Covered Bridge, the Blow-Me-Down Covered Bridge, and the Dingleton Hill Covered Bridge.

Visit to the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site

In 1763 English colonists, besides naming the village after Sir Samuel Cornish, a Royal Navy admiral, settled here using the riverbanks as a transport point for the timber for ship sails that were conveyed on the river waters. In 1885 the renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens settled here to take walks and escape the summer heat of New York. Augustus Saint-Gaudens is known for the bronze statue of Diana, once atop the old Madison Square Garden. His Sherman Memorial shines in the southeastern corner of Central Park, and his Peter Cooper Monument stands solidly outside Cooper Union. He lived in a majestic hilltop home surrounded by his studio, gardens, and acres of forest. Today the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site offers garden tours with 150 sculptures and Saint-Gaudens works. The natural landscape is itself a work of art and deserves walks and natural explorations along the paths. Artists and friends followed Saint Gaudens; among them painter and illustrator Maxfield Parrish, who designed and built his residence in this area, Oaks.

Cornish Art Colony

The entire area became the center of the well-known Cornish Art Colony, one of the first artist colonies in the United States and, similar to others in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and Dublin in New Hampshire, the natural beauty of the landscape, climate, and relative isolation intellectually stimulated and mutually encouraged the variety of resident artists. The first wave of artists arrived before 1895 and was mostly painters; among the first were George de Forest Brush and Thomas Dewing.

Others followed: painter Henry O. Walker, architect, painter, and engraver Charles Platt; painter and engraver Stephen Parrish with his son illustrator and painter Maxfield, painter and art critic Kenyon Cox. All bought land and built residences in the 1890s. Some, including the famous sculptor Daniel Chester French, painter John White Alexander, sculptor Paul Manship, came for summers like President Woodrow Wilson, who made the writer Winston Churchill’s house “Harlakenden House” (destroyed by fire in 1923) the Summer White House from 1913 to 1915. The colony fostered interrelations among different arts: painting, sculpture, decoration, illustration, architecture, landscape design, novels, journalism, theater, poetry, criticism, essays, composition, music, from Boston and New York. In 1905 it is estimated about 40 families resided there for much of the year and some year-round. Arrival to the colony occurred in three phases: artists and sculptors in the late 1880s and early 1890s; writers in the 1890s; then lawyers, doctors, politicians, and wealthy people after 1905.

The gardens of Cornish

Gardens were a common element of the colony. Extensive ones belonged to Thomas Dewing and Stephen Parrish, who kept pace with the landscape design of Charles Platt and his protégées Ellen Shipman and Rose Nichols. Stephen Parrish fell in love with the pastoral beauty of Cornish visited together with landscape architect Charles Platt, his student with a house at Cornish. In 1893, Stephen acquired 18 acres next to Platt and built a house he called Northcote. He spent the next ten years working on the garden which was considered by many the most beautiful garden of all artist colony gardens. It was precisely due to the beauty of the countryside as well as the artist homes and gardens that Stephen Parrish was captivated by Cornish and his famous son – Maxfield – followed in his footsteps a few years later, building a house, studio, and fenced garden. The houses were closely related to the gardens; indoor and outdoor areas framed the views. As in Tuscany, building in Cornish was a challenge but the genius was understanding the landscape.

From 1893 to 1910 Stephen kept a detailed diary on his garden, including notes on weather, birds, daily activities, garden purchases, plant list (including those that grew well), and garden-related newspaper clippings. Generous information on paintings and visits received. When his granddaughter Anne Bogardus Parrish died in 1966, she left the precious diary to Dartmouth College. Northcote is the best-documented garden in all of Cornish and it attracted attention, was photographed and described in House and Garden, The Century Magazine and Country Life in America, and was also published in two important garden books, American Gardens by Guy Lowell and Beautiful Gardens in America by Louise Shelton.

Artists and patrons in Cornish built a number of architecturally notable homes. Most of the Cornish Colony heritage is within a 5-kilometer radius, in the northeastern corner of Cornish and southwest of Plainfield. Historical buildings of the Cornish Colony and structures in the villages of Plainfield and Cornish include residences, barns, carriage houses, studios, ancillary structures and gardens, social institutions, and public buildings. About ten properties in Cornish and Plainfield are attributed to the well-known architect and colony resident, Charles Platt, who mixed American influences with those of Italian villas. Besides Platt’s works following the style of Italian villas, residences built in this period generally maintain styles such as Colonial Revival, and Shingle and Craftsman motifs. At the end of the visit, a nice walk in Cornish is worth it. This idyllic corner of New Hampshire would be worth at least one overnight stay to fully enjoy the pastoral beauty of the landscapes.

4th stop: towards Williamstown

Continue the journey towards the hills of the Berkshire in Western Massachusetts, place Williamstown (157 km). Arrival and visit to the splendid The Clark Museum. You visit this treasure trove of art and stroll in the huge park where sculptures stand. The Clarks – wealthy magnates of the Berkshire Region – donated their extensive private collection of art, paintings, and sculptures to the town of Williamstown, a small gem in northern Berkshire, western Massachusetts. The delightful museum and art research center Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, often simply called Clark Art Institute or The Clark, was built by an heir of Singer, the “barons” of sewing machines, and well hidden in this bucolic area to protect 19th-century and Italian Renaissance art works in case New York was bombed by the Germans during World War II. The French art collection includes Impressionists – with countless Renoir paintings making it the largest collection in the USA –, famous Degas ballerinas, as well as American artists’ paintings, John Singer Sargent paintings, English silver, etc. In June 2008, the museum and campus expanded with the addition of the Stone Hill Center, a roughly three-thousand-square-meter wing designed by Tadao Andō. This incredible museum is set on approximately 52 hectares of garden grounds, a harmonious unity with the architecture of the building, and is an invitation to take lovely walks in the woods, interrupted by views of the bucolic landscapes. The museum has a cafeteria with excellent snacks.

5th Stop: towards Lenox in southern Berkshire

(44 km) and then Stockbridge, MA.

Lenox

The famous American writer, the first female Pulitzer Prize Edith Wharton, author of numerous famous novels now known even in Italy (notably the Martin Scorsese film based on the book, “The Age of Innocence”), lived in Lenox. Her residence – The Mount – is a beautiful country house in Italian Renaissance style, which the writer designed together with the land and the whole estate considering it her “first true home”. The Mount celebrated its centenary in 2002 after a complete renovation of the exterior and interior. Wharton was not only an important writer but also became famous for the art of decoration, both of houses and gardens, breaking down old bleak and heavy Victorian room and decoration canons and fully embracing light and Italian-style gardens. She authored essays on this topic, revolutionizing the style of her time and becoming a true “trend-setter”. She lived in Italy and traveled extensively in Europe. She was one of the female representatives of the Boston “intelligentsia” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was esteemed by artists and writers such as Henry James who used to spend brief stays here. The layout of the residence with its vast park is spectacular, as are the historic gardens. In the historic home there is a restaurant-bar with a wonderful terrace. Booking for dining on site is advised.

Continue to Stockbridge which hides a variety of natural and art treasures. (10 km)

Stockbridge

You visit Naumkeag, the former country estate of well-known New York City lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate, located on Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Three decades dedicated to planting and landscape care have produced this splendid New England “cottage garden”. You climb each step of the fountain staircase among white birches and explore all the special gardens, from rose gardens to evergreens. A visit to the home and gardens requires at least two hours. There is a cafeteria offering exquisite sandwiches, salads, drinks, and snacks. Those wishing to enjoy a nice picnic on the grass will find blankets available. With the beautiful house, magnificent gardens, and scenic views, Naumkeag is the quintessence of a Gilded Age country home. This architectural masterpiece is also a family residence. Joseph Choate, a renowned 19th-century lawyer, entrusted the architectural firm McKim, Mead, & White with the design of his 44-room cottage, Naumkeag, which served as a summer vacation home for three successive generations of Choates. With its view of Monument Mountain, wonderful garden collection created by Joseph Choate‘s daughter, Miss Mabel Choate, and Fletcher Steele over 30 years, its original artworks, and the “shingle” style of the residence, Naumkeag offers an unforgettable experience to visitors. You can walk through beautiful gardens: Afternoon Garden, Tree Peony Terrace, Rose Garden, Evergreen Garden, Chinese Garden to find the joyful and creative spirit of Miss Choate and Mr. Steele. Left as a heritage in 1958 – including furnishings, gardening tools, and barn – Naumkeag is a National Historic Landmark offering a direct link to the historical environment of the Berkshires. Additionally, it is a place where, similar to the Choate family, you feel surrounded by beauty and renewal.

Stockbridge is also well known for the most important collection of works by illustrator Norman Rockwell. The Norman Rockwell Museum celebrated 50 years in 2019. The NRM holds the largest collection of original Norman Rockwell paintings that portray scenes of American provincial life made famous worldwide. An American classic that takes us back to life moments from the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. He was an illustrator and lived in Stockbridge in the Berkshire hills. The covers he created for the Saturday Evening Post are cult objects. The museum is located in a broad green valley, surrounded by the hills and forests of western Massachusetts. Thanks to major sponsor Steven Spielberg, this museum is definitely one of the state’s top attractions, also for its modern but classic white “New England” architectural style. In the same location you can visit Norman Rockwell‘s studio, as he left it (open from May to October). At the end of this visit, there is time for a walk along Main Street among shops and art galleries, followed by dinner and an overnight stay at The Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge.

6th stop: towards Hartford, capital of Connecticut

Located on the Connecticut River in the center of the state. (118 km)

Once the city of Hartford, capital of Connecticut, was the richest city in America. In fact, it was for decades after the Civil War, in the second half of the 19th century, when it also became a center of lively intellectual, religious, and progressive life. It also had many industries, such as silk and arms industries, and especially publishing. And it was precisely thanks to the latter that the city founded in 1635 by about a hundred dissenting Puritan pilgrims attracted two of the most important authors in American literary history: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain.

Reverend Lyman Beecher was an important minister of the Congregational Church known for his sermons against slavery. Daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the famous novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” while brother Reverend Henry Ward Beecher opposed slavery and supported the temperance movement and women’s suffrage. Harriet‘s sister, Isabella Beecher Hooker, was a founder of the women’s rights movement. Harriet Beecher Stowe was already famous when she bought the cream-colored villa, where she spent the rest of her life from 1864 until her death in 1896. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center with the family’s historic home is a visit.

Next door stands another equally fascinating historic home: the Mark Twain House and Museum, which was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his family from 1874 to 1891. It was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in American Gothic style. The author of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” went to Hartford in 1871 to visit his publisher. He was a guest at one of Harriet’s sister’s homes in one of the Nook Farm villas and fell in love. One year later, he bought four acres of land just a few hundred meters from Harriet’s home, and two years later he moved into his 15-room, 5-bathroom villa (all equipped with running hot and cold water). Here he wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The house tour takes at least 1 hour, but it’s suggested to add another hour to complete the visit with museum exhibits and the Ken Burns film, Mark Twain. After the visit and a snack, continue to the small state of Rhode Island to reach the town of Newport. Arrival, walk, dinner by the sea, and overnight stay.

7th stop: Gilded Age Mansions in Newport

It’s a leap back in time: we can play as extras in the movie The Great Gatsby and wander through beautiful residences, the Newport Mansions, once summer cottages for aristocratic American families, the Vanderbilt’s, the Astor’s, the Belmont’s. That “innocent” world lived in luxury, eccentricity, and comfort and looked to Europe for inspiration from arts, palaces, and our natural “savoir vivre.” The first stop in Newport is the Beechwood Mansion of the Astors: once inside the palace, you find yourself in 1861. The discovery of the Rich & Famous continues. You visit the Cornelius Vanderbilt Mansion, The Breakers, and that of Edward Berwind, The Elms, then that of William K. Vanderbilt, The Marble House.

The The Breakers Mansion – “The Big Waves” – is the most opulent: it was built in only two years, from 1893 to 1895, with 70 apartments. One of the peculiarities of the residence are the sinks in the bathrooms: they have four taps, two for hot and cold tap water and two for hot and cold seawater. Upstairs you visit the children’s and guest rooms. The Elms is smaller: it was inhabited starting from 1901 and the Berwinds used to celebrate parties with over 200 invited guests. The beautiful library located in the North Alcove consists of dark and red wood panels; the large fireplace is decorated with plants. Don’t miss a nice walk outdoors, admiring the exteriors, parks, avenues, and gardens of these rich residences: you will have a complete dimension of the opulence of Newport’s Golden Age. You will walk along the autumn sea and breathe the Newport breeze that made it famous as the sailing capital and birthplace of the America’s Cup. But especially don’t miss walking along the CLIFF WALK, which skirts Newport’s east shore. It’s a roughly five-kilometer walking trail, created in 1975, offering unmatched views of the sea, cliffs, and natural coastal beauty: wildflowers, birds, and views of the Mansions. There are eight stops on the route from north to south, starting at First Beach on Memorial Boulevard.

In the late afternoon, continue the journey to reach Cape Cod in Massachusetts and stay in one of its 16 enchanting seaside villages. Arrival in Sandwich, dinner, and overnight at the Daniel Webster Inn.

8th stop: Cape Cod and its gardens

Cape Cod

Cape Cod holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans. Bostonian families, New Englanders, and New Yorkers make it their preferred weekend refuge to escape the pressures of city life. It is, in fact, where the Kennedy clan created their “compound” in the village of Hyannis. Cape Cod is a harmony of nature and simplicity, aesthetic taste, and genuineness. Here fields lie near the Atlantic Ocean that in autumn flood and provide a harsh characteristic fruit, a red berry: the American cranberry, essential on the plate with the Thanksgiving Dinner turkey, and also one of the major agricultural products exported by Massachusetts worldwide. Fishing and fish markets’ tradition survives in small coastal villages at Cape Cod. The sea, boats, and catch are among the most typical representations of this peninsula. The images of this island are idyllic visions, not coincidentally immortalized in writings and paintings by artists from Thoreau to Edward Hopper.

In Autumn it lights up with bright light and colors thanks to the Fall Foliage, and cranberry – the red berry – fields emit reddish hues during the annual harvest that offers one of the most incredible natural spectacles. Writers and painters frequented Cape Cod as early as the 1800s. Thoreau wrote a book dedicating pages to three long Atlantic beach walks from Nauset to Provincetown. Nature observation, solitary lives of locals and oyster fishermen. Perhaps it is what inspired famous American writers at Cape Cod: from Tennessee Williams to John dos Passos.

Heritage Museums & Gardens

Visit the Heritage Museums & Gardens, Sandwich – here you find 40 hectares of plants, bulbs, splendid flowers, and well-kept meadows. It’s an extraordinary environment offering unbeatable horticulture, garden design, outdoor discovery, exhibitions of magnificent collections, and bright colors all year round. The moderate temperatures of the region and the rain allow more than 500 varieties cultivated in various garden zones including the Windmill Garden with its spectacular blooms. Workshops, seminars, activities are available all year. Visitors worldwide also come to admire three rooms hosting special and permanent exhibitions: American Folk Art, a vintage carousel, antique cars inside a replica of a classic Shaker barn in Massachusetts and temporary exhibitions. The gardens offer a collection of thousands of rhododendrons, including the famous Dexter variety blooming from late May to mid-June. The site also includes the Old East Mill, a mill built in Orleans, Massachusetts in 1800 and extensively restored between 1999 and 2000. A maze designed by Marty Cain, one of North America’s best maze designers, was added in 2002. Additionally, there is the Hart Family Maze Garden and the Cape Cod Hydrangea Garden. The Special Exhibitions Gallery is a replica of a Revolutionary-era building known as The Temple of Virtue in New Windsor, New York, the very location where George Washington awarded the first Purple Heart to a wounded soldier. The day continues with a visit to another historic garden: Heritage Museums & Gardens, Falmouth – magnificent 1878 estate restored, of the Beebe family, one of the few remaining examples in the northeast of Queen Anne-style architecture. The two magnificent gardens’ two-year restoration completed in 2013; the mansion and gardens are open to the public from April through the end of October. Walks on the estate are offered the first and third Sundays of the month during the open season. Guided tours by teachers and pre-scheduled are available throughout the year for groups of five or more people. Paid admission. Continue – after the visit – to the next stop on Cape Cod, arriving in Provincetown at the northern tip of the peninsula. Walk, dinner, and overnight in Provincetown.

9th stop: Cape Cod National Seashore Park

In autumn, until mid-October – the Province Lands Visitor Center of the National Park is also open. On the sidelines of the visit to the National Park on the Sand Dunes, we strongly recommend an excursion by 4×4 vehicle to access the sand dunes and the park’s marine nature, the Race Point Lighthouse Tour.

Cape Cod National Seashore

The approximately 18,000 hectares comprising the Cape Cod National Seashore across about 65 kilometers of land and sea, from Chatham to Provincetown, constitute one of the largest coastal reserves in the United States. Scientists predict that in five thousand years Cape Cod’s coasts will disappear due to erosion and rising ocean water levels. The Cape is a glacial deposit constantly changing shape due to wind and water movement, sculpting sand dunes along the marine coasts. The cliff at the Marconi Wireless Station near Wellfleet has been visibly eroded since Guglielmo Marconi built his tower in 1901. The Great Island, once a whaling hunters’ destination, is now connected to the peninsula. The entire Cape Cod peninsula loses about one meter of coast annually due to erosion.

It is one of the classic areas constantly subject to the whims of the Atlantic Ocean. The 1978 storm, Hurricane Bob in 1991, and the great storms of 1993 radically changed the landscape of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Important traditional Cape architectures are inside the park: lighthouses, coast guard stations, and historic houses that have always been part of the Cape’s charm. This is a park that must be visited at least once in a lifetime!

Created on August 7, 1961, by President John F. Kennedy, the Cape Cod National Seashore extends for about 60 km of coastline, including the towns of Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, and Chatham: all of undeniable charm and architectural beauty. Native Americans began using this land at least 9,000 years ago. In 1620 a group of Pilgrim Fathers, English religious separatists explored the area to settle the colony. Cape Cod had many benefits to offer, but after months of search they decided to settle in Plymouth. In 1902 Guglielmo Marconi built one of the two North American wireless stations in South Wellfleet. On January 18, 1903, the first Morse code communication took place between Europe and the Atlantic through the Cape Cod station. The Cape was the birthplace of the world’s first sea rescue program, which became the U.S. Life Saving Service in 1872, a service as popular as the U.S. Cavalry thanks to its brave lifesavers. The park includes beaches, sandy cliffs forming dunes, sand depressions, tidal pools, meadows, salt marshes, and soft grassy land. Inland are ponds, natural freshwater pools, and cranberry fields. Vegetation includes pine trees and bushes of oaks and sandy herbaceous plants. Common are beach berries and plums, bayberry, and beach plum. Twenty-five protected wildlife species live there. The park is accessed through two Visitor Centers, which include amphitheaters for historical and natural documentaries, and from here rangers depart for hikes and guided tours. The Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham – open all year – also features a cinema room projecting various historical and natural films and splendid documentaries highlighting different themes related to the Park’s history and the peninsula’s ecosystem, which counts only 18,000 years of glacial era. The center prepares a calendar including talks by historians and writers, lighthouse tours – legendary Massachusetts coast watchtowers – dune exploration and habitats, long beach walks, visits to historic houses and Cape Codders lifestyle, and learning about marine mammal curiosities: seals and whales, an integral part of the Cape’s wildlife heritage. Lunch is free on Main Street in Provincetown before departing to the next Cape village, Brewster. (51 km)

Brewster

Founded in 1656, Brewster today hosts not only splendid beaches but also old sea captain houses – many converted into inns – and other historic buildings, antique shops, and some of Cape Cod’s best restaurants. The historical buildings are open to the public. The Brewster Historical Society is a great place to start and is housed in a 1799 home, Elijah Cobb House on Lower Road. The historical society also manages the 1795 mill, Higgins Farm Windmill, now located at Drummer Boy Park. The Brewster Old King’s Highway Historic District includes much territory surrounding the scenic Route 6A (Old King’s Highway); attractions include the 1881 town hall, Old Town Hall, the 1868 women’s library, Brewster Ladies Library, and a cemetery dating to 1707. The 1659 Dillingham House is among Cape Cod’s oldest homes. Lastly, the ancient mill Stony Brook Grist Mill and Museum.

Dinner at Chillingsworth, long considered one of Cape Cod’s best restaurants, attracting food lovers in a 300-year-old location; or alternatively, the excellent former fish market, Brewster Fish House.

10th stop: towards Plimoth Plantation

(75 km)

Plimoth Plantation: defined as a “living history” museum because it reproduces real life in 17th-century Plymouth, the Plimoth Colony offers you the opportunity to travel back in time to experience how life really was then. You will talk with the Pilgrim Fathers busy with daily chores, meet crew members who helped steer the Mayflower to its historic destination of Plymouth, and directly meet the original inhabitants of this land, who will tell you how colonists’ arrival changed the existence of their ancestors, the Wampanoag, “the people of the dawn.” Imagine how different your life would be if suddenly you found yourself in the shoes of the Pilgrim Fathers or the Indians.

Pilgrim Fathers

The Pilgrim Fathers in the village know nothing about the future. Listen to the various dialects reflecting places of origin. In the village you will be surrounded by modest wooden cottages, cultivated gardens and vegetable patches, farm animals, and enchanting inhabitants in period costume, belonging to the Plymouth Colony, the first English settlement in New England. The people you meet are interpreters playing the role of inhabitants, in costumes carefully reproduced as in the past, narrating more or less the events of their lifetime and history: these are the Pilgrims “Pilgrims”. Each has their story to tell. You can learn about the difficulties at the colony’s beginning or discover village gossip. You can also ask them about religion and their Protestant faith, fugitives from England, or about medical practices and relations with the native Wampanoag Indians. If you speak with a housewife, you will learn what a “pottage” is or watch how to cook a duck or baked fish. You might also help a young settler sow a small field, contribute to building a house, or simply relax on a bench immersed in the unique atmosphere of 17th-century New Plymouth. The museum has reproduced every piece you see and touch with accuracy. Even the food is prepared as it was in the 17th century.

Your visit is self-guided with a map in hand, entering the year 1627: feel free to explore the village at your leisure. Don’t be intimidated if you encounter a settler while eating his meal; instead, stop and ask questions or join a lively conversation taking place along one of the village streets. Most objects and tools in the houses are modern reproductions of ancient specimens and can be touched.

The only detail – perhaps difficult for an Italian – is the language used in the village: you should be a Shakespeare expert to feel comfortable with the conversation. Dare: see what reaction you get! Perhaps if you reveal you are Italian, the Pilgrim will mention the Medici and speak of Florence, or simply look at you as a Catholic specimen. The opportunity to have a unique experience in a 1600s village, with a truly English perspective, will make you understand how crucial the Atlantic crossing was at the time. You will be amazed to listen to these people!

Native Wampanoag

The people you will meet at the Wampanoag native camp speak of the past, but their history is told from a modern perspective. You can enter a traditional wetu house and become part of a world certainly unfamiliar. Furs, lit fires, handwoven mats: this is the traditional home of the Wampanoag Indian family when the Pilgrim Fathers arrived. They convey it from their point of view, that of the indigenous. Walk through this natural area and smell the sobaheg (stew) while it cooks on the fire along with aromatic herbs. You will discover medicinal plants, typical remedies used by the Wampanoag natives, or you might help build a canoe carved from a tree trunk – a mishoon (boat) using ancient centuries-old techniques. You can also walk along the shores of the quiet waters of the Eel River. The Wampanoag have lived in southeastern New England for over 12,000 years. The camp revives their history and lets you meet Hobbamock, a tribe member to learn the culture and history of the Wampanoag. You can advocate for the Wampanoag, indigenous people who lived on this land long before English colonists arrived, for hundreds of generations. It is important to note that – unlike the colonists’ village interpreters, here you are not meeting interpreters playing native roles, but original natives wearing deer skins and speaking their current native language, talking about their people, the Wampanoag.

The museum is developed in two distinct and separate areas:

• The Plimoth Plantation is about five kilometers from downtown  Plymouth
• TheMayflower II is moored in Plymouth harbor

In the Visitor Center you will find a wide variety of exhibits, restaurants, restrooms, and the main museum store, which includes a children’s section and a vintage food section. In the Crafts Center (stable craft center) you can meet and watch artisans at work, creating replica pieces for the historic Plimoth Plantation sites. You can eat at the Plantation that has a cafeteria.

Continue to Boston where the journey ends and the experience of parks, gardens, and historic residences of this America immersed in history and its traditions concludes.

©Thema Nuovi Mondi

New England Travel Map