Harvard University 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, Cambridge, MA, 617-495-3045, 617-495-1573, With a history of fostering and promoting the best in intellectual achievements and endeavours, Harvard University is rich in history and offers tours to the public. more... 

Hooper/Lee/Nichols House (circa 1685) 159 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, Cambridge, MA, 617-547-4252, This historic house is now in a Georgian style, but incorporates within itself what is believed to be the oldest house in Cambridge; originally constructed in the late 1600s, the house has endured many changes and additions throughout its three-hundred-year history. The tours offered of this historic dwelling showcase the importance and significance that the alterations and growth of the house add to its historical importance, the tracing of which is correlated with changes in culture, taste, architecture, economics, and history itself. more... 

Longfellow National Historic Site 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617-876-4491, Now preserved and operated under the auspices of the National Park Service, this historic home was the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from 1837 to 1882; Longfellow is known as one of the world’s most eminent men of letters, and made his mark as a poet, scholar and educator, and was seen as playing a central role in the formation of a distinctly American intellectual culture in the Nineteenth Century; the house was also a meeting place for preeminent philosophers, thinkers, and artists of the period, including such luminaries as Nathaniel Hawthorn, Charles Sumner, Julia ward Howe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Aside from the connection to literary history, this house also has historical connections to Colonial history, in that is was used as the headquarters of George Washington when he was Commander-In–Chief of the Continental Army and planning the Siege of Boston in 1775 and 1776.  more... 

Mount Auburn Cemetery 580 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617-547-7105, Among the first garden cemeteries ever constructed, this graveyard is the site of the final resting places of such notables as Charles Bulfinch, Winslow Homer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.  

Old Burying Ground Graden and Massachusetts Avenues, Cambridge, MA 02138, This historic cemetery is the site of the graves of eight Harvard presidents, as well as the graves of African American volunteers who were veterans of the American Revolutionary War, such as Cato, Steadman, and Neptune Frost. 

Arthur M. Sackler Museum 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617-495-3393, The Sackler Museum boasts an extensive collection of antiquarian art, with examples from many times, cultures and locations; included in the collection are works that explore Ancient, Asian, Islamic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Roman, and Greek art, and, through the study of the art, encourages an exploration of the histories and cultures of these divergent places and periods as well.  more... 

Busch-Reisinger Museum/Harvard University 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617-495-9400, 617-469-8576, This museum is the only of its kind in America, with an emphasis on the art of German-speaking countries, and promotes an educated enjoyment of the arts of Northern and Central Europe; of special note are the collections of Austrian art, German Expressionism, Abstract art from the 1920s, and works that are related to the Bauhaus movement. One can view artwork from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and the museum is ever expanding its collection of post World War II and contemporary art from the German-speaking regions in Europe. more... 

Fogg Art Museum/Harvard University 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, Harvard, 617-495-9400, The oldest of Harvard’s museums, the Fogg Art Museum was opened to the general public in 1895; surrounding an Italian Renaissance courtyard, the museum features a collection that includes works that represent the history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present day, with an emphasis on Italian early Renaissance, Nineteenth-Century art from France, and the British pre-Raphaelite works. Also prominent in the museum’s holdings is one of the finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artworks.  more... 

Harvard University Museums 24 Oxford Street and 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, Harvard University, 617-495-3045, 617-496-1027, Harvard offers a great selection of fine museums, including several art museums, a selection of Natural History museums that include a Botanical Garden, a Mineralogical and Geological Museum, and a Museum of Comparative Zoology; other museums and collections include the Arnold Arboretum, a collection of historical scientific instruments, a museum devoted to forest history and ecology, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and a Semitic Museum that houses a collection of Near Eastern archaeological artifacts.  more... 

List Visual Arts Center 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 617-253-4680, The aim of this museum is to promote and present the cutting edge in art of all media that challenges the viewer; in an effort to display art that inspires intellectual exploration, the exhibits present contemporary art that makes us stop and reevaluate the world in which we live. By offering art that does not concentrate solely on traditional ideas of aesthetics, the LVAC hopes to awaken in the viewer an even stronger desire to “explore art that examines the cultural, social, and sometimes, scientific or economic, contexts that surround us; to expose, rethink, and represent aspects of our world.” In short, the goal of the museum seems to be the goal of most great art: to shift the perception of the viewer in a way that the mundane world is seen suddenly in a new light, in a new way, that makes the commonplace world transform into something new for jaded eyes. 

MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 617-253-4444, The MIT Museum features permanent collections that include art, drawings, photographs, artifacts, and holograms; collections include the Science and Technology Collection, the Holography Collection, the Hart Nautical Collection, the Architecture and Design Collection, and a general collection that documents--- through artifacts, drawings, paintings, art objects, and much more--- the history of the university and the influence that MIT has had upon developments in science, technology and engineering.  more...