Old North Church

Boston's Old North Church is the city's oldest surviving church and most visited historic site. Located in Boston's famous North End, also known as Little Italy, the church is a stop on the Freedom Trail. Anyone can enjoy exploring the church and its associated shops and gardens. Kids and teens will especially love the Behind the Scenes Tour up the steeple and down into the crypt, but anyone...

Check out the other historic landmarks on the Freedom Trail.

The church is home to an Episcopalian congregation and is still a functioning place of worship, so during holy days, hours for visitors vary. Call ahead for additional info.

At one end of the Paul Revere Mall is a church famous not only for being the oldest standing church building in Boston (built in 1723) but for housing the two lanterns that glimmered from its steeple on the night of April 18, 1775. This is Christ, or Old North, Church, where Paul Revere and the young sexton Robert Newman managed that night to signal the departure by water of the British...

Look up! In this building's original steeple, sexton Robert Newman hung two lanterns on the night of April 18, 1775, to signal Paul Revere that British troops were setting out for Lexington and Concord in boats across the Charles River, not on foot. We know that part of the story in Longfellow's words: "One if by land, and two if by sea." (Trivia bonus: Newman was a great-grandson of George...

The Background
On the night of April 18, 1775, two lanterns were hung briefly in the church's steeple to warn that the British were moving by sea, but those few moments secured the church...

Immortalized in Longfellow's poem Paul Revere's Ride, the Old North is the oldest church building in Boston and the city's most visited historic site. On the evening of April 18, 1775, the Old North sexton, Robert Newman, climbed the steeple and held high two lanterns as a signal from Paul Revere that the British were marching to Lexington and Concord to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock...