Unofficially known as Boston’s “Little Italy,” the North End is one of the Hub’s smallest neighborhoods—a one-square-mile area jutting into Boston Harbor. But it has played an outsized role in the city’s cultural, historical, and culinary history. Within convenient walking distance of Government Center, it’s Boston’s oldest residential area, with a history of European settlement stretching back to the early 17th-century Puritans.

Over the past 400 years, the area has been home to an early African American community and to waves of Irish, eastern European Jewish, and more recently, Italian immigrants. By 1930, almost all inhabitants were Italian, and it had gained its reputation as Little Italy. Today, it continues to be a popular destination for Bostonians and visitors from across the globe who come for the food, the sites, or the neighborhood’s summer street festivals honoring revered saints.