Granary Burying Ground

The Granary Burying Ground is where the American Revolution is buried — literally. Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine (Declaration of Independence signer), and the victims of the Boston Massacre are all interred here, in a three-acre cemetery established in 1660 that sits incongruously in the middle of downtown Boston, surrounded by office towers and a few feet from the traffic on Tremont Street.

The cemetery gets its name from the granary that once stood on the site of the adjacent Park Street Church, and the headstones — many carved with the winged skulls, hourglasses, and crossed bones that were standard 17th-century Puritan mortality symbols — are among the oldest surviving carved stones in New England. The slate markers have weathered unevenly, and some of the inscriptions are illegible, but the markers for the famous graves are well-maintained and clearly identified.

The most visited grave is Paul Revere's, near the centre of the cemetery, but the most affecting is the collective marker for the victims of the Boston Massacre — five men killed by British soldiers on March 5, 1770, in an incident that Samuel Adams (buried nearby) used as propaganda to build the case for independence. The cemetery is free, open daily, and takes about 20 minutes to walk through — just long enough to remind you that the people who started the American Revolution are buried in a space smaller than a city block.