MIT & Cambridge Guide: Kendall Square, Harvard Yard & Innovation Hub

Cambridge, directly across the Charles River from Boston, is home to two of the world's most influential universities within a single square mile — and the neighbourhood that has grown around them has become one of America's most intellectually dense and culturally vibrant urban environments. MIT and Harvard shape everything here: the restaurants, the bookshops, the conversations overheard in coffee shops, and the extraordinary density of museums open to the public.

MIT's campus is a striking architectural experiment — from the Beaux-Arts main building to Eero Saarinen's Kresge Auditorium, Frank Gehry's Stata Center, and the newest Kendall Square buildings that house the spinoff companies hatched from MIT labs. The MIT Museum on Main Street has accessible and fascinating exhibitions on robotics, AI, and the history of the institute's inventions.

Harvard's older brick campus radiates from Harvard Yard. The Harvard Art Museums complex under Renzo Piano's roof is excellent. The Harvard Natural History Museum's Glass Flowers — 4,300 botanically accurate glass models of 830 plant species — are one of New England's most extraordinary and under-visited wonders. Finish the day in Kendall Square's excellent restaurant scene, where biotech researchers and engineers have created demand for some of Boston's best food.