Plymouth Walking Tour: Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims
Walk from a towering tribute to the Pilgrims down to the waterfront and up the colony’s first street.
Massachusetts
Things to do in Plymouth on foot
The walk
Plymouth on foot
Plymouth is where the Mayflower's passengers built their colony in the winter of 1620, on the homeland of the Wampanoag, and much of what you see by the harbor today was put there later by people deciding how that story should be told. A boulder became a national symbol. A hill of graves became a park. A granite giant went up on the hill above town. Our walk starts at the National Monument to the Forefathers, where the figure of Faith stands 36 feet tall, and goes down past Pilgrim Hall Museum to the Mayflower II at State Pier and to Plymouth Rock under its granite portico, where the date 1620 was carved into the stone in 1880. On Cole's Hill, above the Rock, you hear about the colonists buried there during the first winter and about the Wampanoag leader Massasoit, whose statue stands on the hill. Then you walk up Leyden Street, the colony's first street, to Burial Hill, and finish at two of the oldest houses in town, the Richard Sparrow House and the Jabez Howland House. The walk is 2.2 miles and takes about 1 hour 1 minute with the stories. The stories tell the Pilgrims' years and the Wampanoag side of them, and what later generations added.
Plymouth: questions people ask
Is Plymouth Rock worth seeing?
It's a gray boulder under a granite portico on the waterfront, with 1620 carved into it in 1880. Seeing it takes a minute. The story of how a rock that no Pilgrim ever wrote about became a national symbol is the reason to stop.
How long does it take to see Plymouth's historic sites on foot?
Our walk covers nine of them, from the Forefathers Monument to the Jabez Howland House, in 2.2 miles and about 1 hour 1 minute with the stories. Going inside Pilgrim Hall or aboard the Mayflower II adds time.
What happens on Cole's Hill on Thanksgiving?
Since 1970, Native people and their supporters have gathered on Cole's Hill, near the statue of Massasoit, for the National Day of Mourning, which remembers what the colonists' arrival cost the Wampanoag and other Native nations.
Is there a self-guided tour of Plymouth?
Yes. "Plymouth Walking Tour: Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims" is on Stories. Unlock it once for your group for $4.99 and play it in your browser; the app plays each story as you arrive.
Every Stories tour plays in your browser, no app needed. How it works
Know someone headed to Plymouth? Give a walk as a gift, emailed on the day you pick.