A stroll around Beacon Hill leaves many visitors pining to know what the stately homes look like inside. This is one of the only places to satisfy that curiosity. The 1804 home holds beautiful antique furnishings, art, carpets, and tapestries collected by several generations of the Nichols family. Its most prominent occupant, Rose Standish Nichols, was a suffragist and a pioneering landscape designer. Her legacy includes not just family heirlooms but objects she brought back from her many travels to the thoroughfare Henry James (who lived at no. 131) reputedly called "the only respectable street in America."

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Boston 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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