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Boston
State capital
Downtown Boston from Boston Harbor Old State House Acorn Street, Beacon Hill Massachusetts State House Fenway Park during a Boston Red Sox game Back Bay from the Charles River
Flag Seal Wordmark
Nicknames:  Bean Town, Title Town, others
Motto:  Sicut patribus sit Deus nobis (Latin) “As God was with our fathers, so may He be with us”
Interactive map of Boston
Boston Show map of Greater Boston area Boston Show map of Massachusetts Boston Show map of the United States Boston Show map of Earth
Coordinates: 42°21′37″N 71°3′28″W / 42.36028°N 71.05778°W / 42.36028; -71.05778
Country	United States
Region	New England
State	Massachusetts
County	Suffolk
Historic countries	Kingdom of England Commonwealth of England Kingdom of Great Britain
Historic colonies	Massachusetts Bay Colony, Dominion of New England, Province of Massachusetts Bay
Settled	1625
Incorporated (town)	September 7, 1630 (date of naming, Old Style) September 17, 1630 (date of naming, New Style)
Incorporated (city)	March 19, 1822
Named after	Boston, Lincolnshire
Government
• Type	Strong mayor / Council
• Mayor	Michelle Wu (D)
• Council	Boston City Council
• Council President	Liz Breadon (D)
Area
• State capital	89.61 sq mi (232.10 km)
• Land	48.34 sq mi (125.20 km)
• Water	41.27 sq mi (106.90 km)
• Urban	1,655.9 sq mi (4,288.7 km)
• Metro	4,500 sq mi (11,700 km)
• CSA	10,700 sq mi (27,600 km)
Elevation	46 ft (14 m)
Population  (2020)
• State capital	675,647
• Estimate  (2024)	673,458
• Rank	71st in North America 25th in the United States 1st in Massachusetts
• Density	13,976.9/sq mi (5,396.51/km)
• Urban	4,382,009 (US: 10th)
• Urban density	2,646/sq mi (1,021.8/km)
• Metro	4,941,632 (US: 10th)
Demonym	Bostonian
GDP
• Metro	$644.814 billion (2024)
Time zone	UTC−5 (EST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (EDT)
ZIP Codes	53 ZIP Codes 02108–02137, 02163, 02196, 02199, 02201, 02203–02206, 02210–02212, 02215, 02217, 02222, 02126, 02228, 02241, 02266, 02283–02284, 02293, 02295, 02297–02298, 02467 (also includes parts of Newton and Brookline)
Area codes	617 and 857
FIPS code	25-07000
GNIS feature ID	617565
Website	boston.gov

Boston is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It serves as a cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Boston has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area had a population of 4.9 million in 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the eleventh-largest in the United States.

Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, including the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), Paul Revere’s midnight ride (1775), the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775–1776).

Following American independence from Great Britain, Boston played an important national role as a port, manufacturing hub, and education and culture center, and the city expanded significantly beyond the original peninsula by filling in land and annexing neighboring towns. Boston’s many firsts include the nation’s first public park (Boston Common, 1634), the first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635), and the first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897).

Boston later emerged as a global leader in higher education and research and is the largest biotechnology hub in the world as of 2023. The city is a national leader in scientific research, law, medicine, engineering, and business. With nearly 5,000 startup companies, the city is considered a global pioneer in innovation, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence. Boston’s economy is led by finance, professional and business services, information technology, and government. Boston households provide the highest average rate of philanthropy in the nation as of 2013, and the city’s businesses and institutions rank among the top in the nation for environmental sustainability and new investment.

Before European colonization, the region surrounding present-day Boston was inhabited by the Massachusett people, who established small, seasonal communities in present-day Boston. In 1630, settlers led by John Winthrop arrived, and found Shawmut Peninsula nearly empty of Native people. Most had died of European diseases borne by earlier settlers and traders. Archaeological excavations have unearthed one of the oldest fishweirs in New England, located on Boylston Street, which Native people constructed as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.

The first European to live in what would become Boston was a University of Cambridge-educated Anglican cleric named William Blaxton. He was most directly responsible for the foundation of Boston by Puritan colonists in 1630, after Blaxton invited one of their leaders, Isaac Johnson, to cross Back Bay from the failing colony of Charlestown and share the peninsula with him. In September 1630 Puritans made the crossing to present-day Boston.

Puritan influence on Boston began even before the settlement was founded with the 1629 Cambridge Agreement, which created the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was signed by the colony’s first governor, John Winthrop. Puritan ethics and their focus on education also influenced the city’s early history. In 1635, America’s first public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston.

Boston was the largest town in the Thirteen Colonies until Philadelphia outgrew it in the mid-18th century. Boston’s oceanfront location made it a lively port, and the town engaged in shipping and fishing during the colonial era. Boston was a primary stop on the Caribbean trade route and imported large amounts of molasses, which led to the creation of Boston baked beans.

Boston’s economy stagnated in the decades prior to the American Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia both surpassed Boston in wealth. During this period, Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other New England cities were growing rapidly.

Boston played a central role in the American Revolution. Many crucial events of the American Revolution and subsequent American Revolutionary War occurred in or near Boston, where the city’s revolutionary spirit against Britain’s colonial governance was demonstrable and ultimately inspiring to the rest of the Thirteen Colonies. When the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then lieutenant governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, were raved by Boston mobs. The British responded by sending two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the revolt, but the increased British military presence in Boston only ended up further inflaming the Boston colonists. In 1770, during the Boston Massacre, British troops fired into a Boston mob that was protesting their presence. The massacre forced the British to withdraw their troops and helped fuel revolutionary sentiment in the colonies.

In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which many colonists saw as a British attempt to compel them to accept taxes established by the Townshend Acts. This led to the Boston Tea Party, a defining event of the American Revolution in which angered Bostonians threw an entire shipment of tea sent from the East India Company into Boston Harbor, escalating the American Revolution. The British monarchy responded furiously, implementing the Intolerable Acts and demanding compensation for the tea destroyed during the Boston Tea Party. This response, in turn, angered the colonists further, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, which were fought around Boston in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

During the siege of Boston from April 19, 1775, to March 17, 1776, New England-based Patriot militia impeded movement by the British Army. Sir William Howe, then commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege. On June 17, the British captured Charlestown in present-day Boston during the Battle of Bunker Hill during which the British Army outnumbered Patriot militia. But the British sustained irreplaceable casualties, turning the Battle of Bunker Hill into a pyrrhic victory for the British. The Battle of Bunker Hill also demonstrated the skill and training of the Patriot militia, whose stubborn defense made it difficult for the British to capture Charlestown without suffering even further casualties.

On June 14, 1775, in an effort to unify the Revolutionary War effort, the Second Continental Congress, convening in the colonial-era capital of Philadelphia, founded the Continental Army and unanimously appointed George Washington as its commander-in-chief. Washington then immediately departed Philadelphia for Boston, where he arrived on July 2, 1775, and led the newly-formed Continental Army in the siege. Fighting was limited to small-scale raids and skirmishes, and the Continental Army faced challenges with a deficiency of munitions and supplies. Boston Neck, then narrow and only approximately 100 feet wide, impeded Washington’s ability to invade Boston, which led to a prolonged stalemate between the Continental Army and British forces. A young officer, Rufus Putnam, came up with a plan to make portable fortifications out of wood, which were erected on the frozen ground under cover of darkness. Putnam supervised the effort, which successfully installed the fortifications and dozens of cannons on Dorchester Heights that Henry Knox laboriously brought through the snow from Fort Ticonderoga. The following morning, the astonished British Army awoke to see a large array of cannons bearing down on them. General Howe is believed to have said that the Americans had done more in one night than his British Army could have done in six months. The British Army responded by attempting to launch a cannon barrage for two hours, but their shots could not reach the Continental Army’s cannons at such a height. The British then gave up, boarded their ships, and sailed away from Boston in what has come to be known as “Evacuation Day”, which is now celebrated in Boston annually on March 17. After the British retreat, Washington was so impressed with the effort of Rufus Putnam that he appointed him as his chief engineer.

After the Revolution, Boston’s long seafaring tradition helped make it one of the nation’s busiest ports for both domestic and international trade. Boston’s harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807, which was adopted during the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Boston’s merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the meantime. Manufacturing became an important component of the city’s economy, and the city’s industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. The small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads furthered the region’s industry and commerce.