Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Four hundred and fifty thousand works of art under one roof — one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Boston offline.
The MFA ranks 20th-largest in the world by public gallery area, with 8,161 paintings alone. Architect Guy Lowell designed the Huntington Avenue building in deliberate phases as funding arrived, so the structure itself grew with the ambition. Over 1.2 million people visit annually, but the scale means crowds rarely overwhelm.
What to look for
- The 500-foot granite facade and grand rotunda from the 1909 opening phase of Guy Lowell's neoclassical design
- The wing along The Fens — funded entirely by a single donor, Maria Antoinette Evans Hunt — opened 1915
- The breadth: 450,000+ total works, making repetition across visits unlikely
Located on Huntington Avenue in Fenway–Kenmore; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a short walk away, making both doable in one afternoon.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston is one of 31 sights worth the detour in Boston, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Boston pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Boston
- TD GardenThe subway stops underneath it — TD Garden is built directly above MBTA's North Station, so you step off the train and you are already at the door.
- Harvard College ObservatoryOn the night of July 16-17, 1850, astronomers here made the first daguerreotype of a star — Vega — through a telescope that was the largest in North America.
- Fenway ParkThe oldest active ballpark in MLB, where a cramped city block accidentally invented some of baseball's most famous features.
- Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumIn 1990, thieves walked out with thirteen works worth $500 million — none have ever come back, and the case is still open.
- Boston Public LibraryJohn Adams' personal 3,800-volume library lives here — and any Massachusetts adult can walk in and access it.
- Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & SmithsonianThe lab that produced the first-ever image of a black hole sits right on the Harvard campus.