Boston is the capital and most populous city of Massachusetts and the cultural and financial center of New England, founded by English Puritan settlers in 1630 on the Shawmut Peninsula.

Settlers named the city after the market town of Boston in Lincolnshire, England, and that same year it was declared the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As of the 2020 census the city held 675,647 residents — the third-most populous in the Northeastern United States after 📝New York City, NY and Philadelphia — while the surrounding Greater Boston metropolitan area counted roughly 4.9 million in 2023, the largest in New England.

Boston anchored several seminal events of the American Revolution, among them the Boston Massacre of 1770, the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and Paul Revere's midnight ride and the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. The city is also the site of many national firsts, including the first public school in the United States, founded in 1635, and the country's first subway system, opened in 1897.