Battery Wharf Hotel, Boston Waterfront ★★★★

Four buildings on a colonial wharf

Battery Wharf takes its name from the North Battery, the shoreline fort General John Leverett raised on Merry's Point in 1646 to cover the mouth of the Charles River. The guns went, the wharf stayed: Joseph Warren Revere, son of Paul, bought it in 1831 and enlarged it, and steamships to Baltimore sailed from here at the end of the nineteenth century. The old pier was cleared for the present hotel and residences, and the 150 rooms are laid out across four low buildings named after ships and Bostonians, the Joseph Warren Revere and the Sea Cloud among them, so that most of the property stands directly over the water. A small Boston Maritime Museum on site tells that story, and a 24-hour observation deck looks out over the harbor. The hotel opened under the Fairmont flag and now runs as an independent house.

Rooms that look at the harbor

Rooms come with one king, one queen or two double beds, pillow-top mattresses and European bedding, in a calm seaside palette of blues, greys and pale wood, with deep-buttoned headboards and an armchair by the window. The ones to book are the harbor-view rooms and the suites on the water side, where the windows frame the inner harbor, the Charlestown shore and the boats coming and going. Room-service breakfast at the window table is the reason to ask for that side.

Exhale, the spa on the waterfront

The spa is run by Exhale, the American wellness brand, and takes up its own space on the wharf with treatment rooms for massage, facials and body work, a fitness centre and a schedule of classes. A sauna and a sun terrace complete the circuit. Few Boston hotels pair a spa of this size with a waterfront address, and it gives a stay here a rhythm that a downtown tower does not have.

Battery Wharf Grille and the terrace

The Battery Wharf Grille cooks New England fare from local ingredients, with a long bar, the Battery Lounge for cocktails and, when the weather allows, a terrace under orange parasols where tables face the water. Café Amalfi handles coffee and lighter meals through the day. Dinner on the terrace at sunset, with the harbor lights coming on across the channel, is the image most guests take home.

The North End on foot, the airport by boat

The Harborwalk passes the front door and leads south along the water to Christopher Columbus Park, the New England Aquarium and Long Wharf, where ferries leave for the Harbor Islands. Inland, the streets of the North End begin a block away: Hanover Street and its Italian restaurants and pastry shops, the Old North Church and the Paul Revere House on the Freedom Trail, all within a short walk. TD Garden and Faneuil Hall Marketplace are also close on foot, and the hotel's own dock is served by water taxis to Logan Airport, a crossing of a few minutes that avoids the tunnels entirely.

Why we selected it

Battery Wharf is the North End's waterfront hotel, an upscale, spa-equipped house with harbor-view rooms, a water-taxi dock and a story that begins with a colonial fort. For a stay that combines the Italian quarter, the harbor and a full spa, it fills a place in Boston that no other neighbourhood can offer.