14 Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Salem & Cape Ann

The colonial port of Salem was once a far more important shipping city than Boston, and a primary player in the China Trade. Today, it preserves an astonishing number of fine homes that once belonged to sea captains and wealthy merchants. Walk along Chestnut Street and others in the neighborhood to admire them, and gain insight into the lavish lifestyle of their former residents with a tour of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Trust House.

But Salem-for better or worse-is best known as the scene of the infamous Witchcraft Trials of 1692, and this has been exploited in a number of modern made-for-tourist attractions seeking to recreate this grisly past. This witch mania reaches near frenzy in October and around Halloween, when many residents just leave town to avoid it. It's a shame that in this modern witch hysteria, many visitors fail to see one of America's finest museums, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the wealth of genuine historic homes and tourist sights Salem has to offer.

The entire North Shore area, which includes beautiful and equally historic Cape Ann, has been designated as the Essex National Heritage Area encompassing 34 villages and communities that claim "more historic structures per acre than anywhere else in the country." Just seeing the most outstanding of these gives visitors plenty of things to do here. For ideas, see our list of the top attractions in Salem & Cape Ann.

See also: Where to Stay in Salem and Cape Ann

1. Peabody Essex Museum

At the extraordinary Peabody Essex Museum, you can see collections of maritime art, American decorative arts, and historical and contemporary arts from China, Japan, Korea, India, Africa, North America, and the Pacific Islands. Perhaps most outstanding is the chance to explore inside the Huang family's two-century-old ancestral home, brought here and reassembled from China's Huizhou region.

Also part of the Peabody complex are several historic houses open to visitors, including the 1684 John Ward House; the 1727 Crowninshield-Bentley House; and the brick Gardner-Pingree House (1804), with an elegant interior including work by master builder Samuel McIntire.

Address: 161 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Official site: www.pem.org

2. The House of the Seven Gables

The House of the Seven Gables site is a collection of colonial homes including one of the oldest surviving 17th-century wooden mansions in New England, built in 1668. Nathaniel Hawthorne used the House of Seven Gables as the setting for his famous novel of the same name.

Guides will lead you up curving, secret staircases and recount the history of its former occupants as you view period artifacts, photos, and paintings. Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1804 birthplace, which has been restored to its 1808 appearance, has been moved to the same grounds, which also include four other houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Address: 115 Derby Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Official site: www.7gables.org

3. Salem Maritime National Historic Site

The Salem Maritime National Historic Site includes about nine acres along the waterfront and twelve historic buildings preserving Salem's late 18th- and 19th-century maritime history, which helped establish economic independence in the fledgling United States. This is also the permanent home of the tall ship Friendship, a reconstructed 18th-century commercial sailing vessel, which you can tour in the summer.

At the historic site, you can view exhibits; watch two free orientation films; and glimpse into the lives of author Nathaniel Hawthorne or America's first millionaire, Elias Hasket Derby, during hour-long, free guided tours. Derby's 1762 home is also open to visitors.

Address: 160 Derby Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Official site: http://www.nps.gov/sama/index.htm

4. Witch House (Corwin House)

Judge Jonathan Corwin, one of the magistrates in the witch trials, lived in this large house, built in 1642. It's the only structure still standing in Salem with direct ties to the Witchcraft Trials of 1692. Witch House has been preserved in its original appearance and is an excellent example of Salem's 17th-century architecture.

You'll find the guided tours here especially interesting, blending information about lifestyles, furnishings, and architecture of the time with insights into Corwin's role in the events of 1692. With the proliferation of witch-related tourist attractions with similar names, it can be difficult to sort out the genuine from the rest, but this is the only site actually connected to the trials.

Pioneer Village is another excellent historic attraction in Salem. This three-acre area was the state's first living history museum. The village has examples of a variety of colonial and native buildings, as well as a blacksmith shop and gardens.

Address: 310 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Official site: www.witchhouse.org

5. Stephen Phillips Memorial Trust House

The Phillips House is a Federal-style home featuring Chinese porcelains, Persian carpets, paintings, and early American furniture. The collections span five generations of the Phillips family, highlighting African woodcarvings and Native American pottery.

What you'll find most fascinating about the Phillips House is the way it shows how a real family collects in a home, generation after generation, instead of stripping away all the later years and leaving only the items of a particular period. This house shows the home's use throughout much of Salem's history, with furnishings and family collections from all eras.

Address: 34 Chestnut Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Official site: http://www.historicnewengland.org/historic-properties/homes/phillips-house

6. Rockport

The red fishing shack with its lobster buoys is so often painted and photographed as the iconic New England fishing harbor that it is known as Motif #1. Art galleries and studios still dot the streets of the picturesque little fishing town, and Rockport is known for the number of artists that make the area their home.

The Rockport Art Association and Museum holds summer exhibits featuring members' art and photography, and several local artists have their own galleries. The Sandy Bay Historical Society and Museum, the Old Castle, and the James Babson Cooperage Shop will interest the historically minded.

The greatest local curiosity is the Paper House, built in 1922 entirely of newspaper, as is the furniture inside. Deep-sea fishing and seal-watching cruises leave from T-Wharf in Rockport.

7. Gloucester

The sea, boats, and fishing have occupied this work-a-day Cape Ann fishing harbor for centuries, a tradition commemorated in the bronze statue of the Gloucester Fisherman on the waterfront and in the five-day St. Peter's Festival, organized by Gloucester's Italian American community in late June.

Stop by the excellent little museum of the Cape Ann Historical Association to see works of artist Fitz Henry Lane and others, as well as furniture, decorative arts, and maritime artifacts and exhibits.

Gloucester's picturesque artists' colony of Rocky Neck, one of the country's oldest working art colonies, is still filled with studios and is one of the most popular places to go.

8. Hammond Castle Museum

Hammond Castle was built between 1926 and 1929 by inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr. in the style of a medieval castle to house his personal collection of Roman, medieval, and Renaissance artifacts. While he was gathering these on his frequent trips to Europe, he also collected architectural bits and pieces, as well as interior features that he incorporated into the building.

Hammond combined local granite with ancient and medieval stonework to create his own seaside castle, now a landmark synonymous with Gloucester. Visitors can tour the castle on their own or take a 60-minute guided tour to learn more about the castle and its eclectic contents. Among the castle's most interesting features are its tropical courtyard, maintained by steam pipes, and a massive pipe organ that has a total of 8,400 pipes.

The castle is often host to special events throughout the summer months, including weddings and Renaissance festivals. Special candle-light tours are given periodically during the summer and Halloween seasons. Visitors with mobility issues should note that the castle is not easily accessible.

Address: 80 Hesperus Avenue, Gloucester, Massachusetts

Official site: www.hammondcastle.org

9. Beauport (Sleeper-McCann House)

Beauport was built by Henry Davis Sleeper in 1907 as a summer home, and expanded for the next 27 years until it reached its present 40 rooms. He filled these with his collections of American and European art, curiosities, folk art, china, and colored glass gathered from his travels and his work as an interior designer. He also collected entire room interiors, which he incorporated into the ever-expanding home. Along with seeing the eccentric house, you'll enjoy hearing about Sleeper himself and his equally colorful friends as you tour the rooms.

Address: 75 Eastern Point Boulevard West, Gloucester, Massachusetts

Official site: www.historicnewengland.org/historic-properties/homes/Beauport/beauport

10. Marblehead

Settled in the early 1600s by families escaping the religious intensity of the Puritans in Salem, Marblehead soon became an important fishing port. By 1837, the town's fleet numbered 98 vessels, nearly all of them over 50 tons. Today Marblehead's seagoing fame comes as a sailing and yachting center, where in the summer you can see one of the world's finest assemblies of sailing craft. The annual mid-summer Marblehead Race Week, dating back to 1889, brings yachtsmen from around the world.

Marblehead's streets and lanes are fun to stroll, and you can visit historic Fort Sewell and 1768 Jeremiah Lee Mansion, the beautifully preserved Georgian home of a wealthy merchant and ship owner, where you can see rare 18^th-century hand-painted wallpapers. The 1728 King Hooper Mansion is home to the Marble­head Arts Associ­ation, and along with the historic rooms and garden, you can see regular exhibits by member artists.

11. Essex Shipbuilding Museum

During the 19th century, more two-masted vessels were launched from the town of Essex than any other town in the world. The Essex Shipbuilding Museum, in an 1835 schoolhouse and a shipyard on the riverfront, houses a collection of some 8,000 tools and other items relating to that industry. More than 30,000 photographs portray vessels, landscapes, history, and architecture, with many featuring the various stages of shipbuilding.

Essex River Cruises can take you on narrated tours, where you'll see estates, farms, and historic shipyards in a landscape of salt marshes, islands, barrier beaches, sand dunes, winding rivers, and abundant wildlife.

Address: 66 Main Street, Essex, Massachusetts

12. Ipswich

Ipswich is a popular town with antiques enthusiasts, who revel in the shops and galleries along High Street. The shore estate of Castle Hill is a fine example of those built by wealthy families in the early 20th century, and its grounds include walking trails and the long shore of Crane Beach. You can tour the Great House from late May through mid-October.

Two other historic houses are filled with fine antiques: The John Heard House is a Federal-style mansion, built around 1800, with Asian and American furnishings, art, and a collection of carriages and sleighs. Built in the mid-1600s by a sea captain, the John Whipple House contains period furnishings and other antiques.

13. Halibut Point State Park

Sheets of 440-million-year-old granite have resisted the constant battering of the sea to form Halibut Point, and this fine-grained stone was quarried for building stone from the 1840s until 1929. Evidence of the quarry is interpreted in an excellent self-guided walking tour of the site, and you can often see a live demonstration of granite splitting.

More walking trails lead through the park and along the rocky coastline, popular with birders, especially in the winter, when seabirds such as grebes, ducks, loons, and even puffins feed offshore.

You can get even more far-ranging views-as far as Mount Agamenticus in Maine and the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire on a clear day-from the top of the fire tower. It was built during World War II to provide aiming information to the batteries that defended the coast and the important harbors of Portsmouth and Boston.

14. Beverly

Just north of Salem, Beverly was founded in 1626, and the Beverly Historical Society maintains three historic homes that you can tour. The brick Cabot House was built in 1781 by John Cabot and was the site of the Beverly Bank, the nation's oldest community bank, from 1802 to 1868. Permanent exhibits include dolls, portraits, art, and military and maritime artifacts.

Built in 1636, Balch House is one of the oldest in the country and has been restored to as close to its original design and furnishings as possible. Hale Farm was built in 1694 and owned by Reverend John Hale, who was involved in the witchcraft trials of 1692, when his wife was accused of being a witch.

Address: 117 Cabot Street, Beverly, Massachusetts

Official site: www.beverlyhistory.org

Where to Stay in Salem and Cape Ann for Sightseeing

Most of the tourist attractions in Salem, Rockport, and Gloucester, as well as restaurants and shops, cluster close to their historic harbors. But the entire coast is dotted with scenic points, parks, and sandy beaches, so anywhere you stay on Cape Ann will be near plenty of things to do. These highly rated hotels in Salem and Cape Ann are convenient for sightseeing:

Gloucester Hotels:

• Family-run Ocean House Hotel at Bass Rocks sits on Gloucester's rocky shore, with sea views, a large pool, free breakfast, parking, free bicycles, and Wi-Fi.
• Also with a large pool, Beauport Hotel sits right on the beach overlooking Gloucester harbor. Both hotels are within walking distance of the main places to visit in Gloucester.

Rockport Hotels:

• Watch the surf break on the rocky shore from the long porch of the historic The Emerson Inn in Rockport. There's a pool, free breakfast, free parking, and sidewalks all the way to the harbor and shops, as well as a scenic cliff path to Halibut Point State Park. The inn's Pigeon Cove tavern serves outstanding seafood in the summer, on the verandah overlooking the sea.
• Sitting atop a craggy bluff that overlooks the Atlantic is the Yankee Clipper Inn, an Art Deco mansion built in 1929. This inn has housed many famous guests over the years, from Bette Davis to JFK, and boasts a lovely garden, a sun terrace, and an ocean-view gazebo, as well as a saltwater pool.

Salem Hotels:

• In a residential district of historic homes, the beautifully appointed rooms at The Salem Inn have amenities like fireplaces and whirlpool tubs; breakfast is included. In the midst of all Salem's attractions, dining, and shops, the historic Hawthorne Hotel has free parking and well-decorated traditional rooms with a boutique feel.
• Walk to all Salem's attractions or hop onto the tour trolley right in front of Salem Waterfront Hotel & Suites at Pickering Wharf, where the spacious, modern rooms include free parking.

Tips and Tours: How to Make the Most of Your Visit to Salem and Cape Ann

• Getting to Salem and Cape Ann: Salem and Cape Ann are an easy drive from Boston, or you can take the train from North Station. The most scenic way to arrive in Salem is by high-speed catamaran from Boston's harbor. During the one-hour ride, you can admire the views of the city and coast from the ferry's decks or relax in the indoor lounge. Boston's regular hourly T rail service connects Salem and Rockport.
• Sightseeing in Salem: Learn about Native Americans, the witchcraft trials, and Salem's role in the American Revolution on a two-hour Salem history walking tour. Join a local guide for a stroll through the McIntire Historic District, stopping at Hamilton Hall, Pickering House, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, the Witch House, Burying Point, and other landmarks.

Map of Tourist Attractions in Salem & Cape Ann

Salem, MA - Climate Chart

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Where to Go in Massachusetts: You can learn about more nearby places to visit by referring to our pages on the Top Tourist Attractions in Massachusetts and Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Boston and Cambridge. These will give you a good overview of the major sites and help in planning your trip. If you are heading to this area in summer or even in the shoulder seasons, the shore north of Boston has some of the best beaches in Massachusetts, as well as some good walking and hiking trails, and other destinations for weekend getaways.

Exploring Nearby New Hampshire: If you travel just a bit farther north, you can explore historic Portsmouth and the other attractions of New Hampshire. For outdoor enthusiasts, northern New Hampshire is home to the White Mountains, where you'll find some of New England's best hiking trails and campgrounds, as well as some of the East's best mountains for skiing. Just north of Portsmouth is the beautiful Maine seacoast.