Victoria Mansion (exterior), Portland, Maine, USA.
Photo: Staib at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Audio walking tour

Portland Audio Walking Tour

Portland: Harbor of Histories, Streets of Stories

Stops
34
Core walk
34 of 34 stops within 1.5 mi of the center
Farthest stop
1.2 mi from the center
Start
Monument Square
34 stops GPS-triggered audio No app download Free to start

Thirty-four stops walk Portland, Maine between Monument Square and the Portland Observatory on Munjoy Hill. Monument Square and the 1924 Time and Temperature Building open the route; the 1910 Fidelity Trust Building (Maine's first skyscraper) rises above. The Portland Museum of Art (Maine's largest and oldest public art institution, 1882) and the Charles Shipman Payson Building anchor the Arts District. The McLellan-Sweat Mansion and Victoria Mansion carry Congress Square. Longfellow Square, the Wadsworth-Longfellow House (Portland's oldest surviving building on the peninsula), the Maine Historical Society, and the Longfellow Monument gather the literary chapter. First Parish Church, Portland City Hall with Merrill Auditorium and the Kotzschmar Memorial Organ, Mechanics' Hall, and the 1929 State Theatre carry Congress Street. Exchange Street anchors the Old Port with the Printers' Exchange Block, Rackleff and Woodman Buildings, the Thompson Block, Mariner's Church, and the 1872 United States Customhouse. The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, Fort Allen Park, the Portland Observatory, Abyssinian Meeting House, and Eastern Cemetery close the walk.

Highlights

  • Victoria Mansion (exterior), Portland, Maine, USA.
    Victoria Mansion

    Victoria Mansion, also called the Morse-Libby House, greets you here in downtown Portland as a stately brownstone Italianate villa. Completed in 1860 as a summer home for hotelier Ruggles Sylvester Morse, it offers a remarkably intact portrait of lavish living in nineteenth-century America.

  • McLellan House, Portland Maine
    Portland Museum of Art

    Your walk brings you to the Portland Museum of Art, the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine, in the downtown area known as The Arts District. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882, the museum used a variety of exhibition spaces until 1908, when Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat bequeathed her three‑story mansion, now known as the McLellan House, and sufficient funds to create a gallery in memory of her late husband, Lorenzo De Medici Sweat, a U.S. Representative.

  • Time & Temperature building, Congress and Center Streets, Portland, Maine
    Time and Temperature Building

    Look up at 477 Congress Street, the Time and Temperature Building, originally the Chapman Building, a 14-story office tower on Congress Street in downtown Portland, Maine. It replaced Preble House, itself a successor to the mansion of Commodore Edward Preble.

  • Wadsworth-Longfellow House, Portland, Maine
    Wadsworth-Longfellow House

    At 489 Congress Street, the Wadsworth-Longfellow House is the oldest surviving structure on the Portland peninsula and a museum run by the Maine Historical Society. This brick house, built between 1785 and 1786 by American Revolutionary War General Peleg Wadsworth, was the first wholly brick dwelling in Portland.

  • Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum

    Since 1993 the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum has run its 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge railway, reporting mark MNGX, from the former Portland Company Marine Complex in front of you. Operating out of the former Portland Company Marine Complex since it was founded in 1993, the museum's collection gathers passenger and freight equipment and artifacts from the 2 ft lines that ran across Maine in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

All 34 stops

How it works

1

Open on your phone

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2

Start walking

Head toward any historic stop. No fixed route.

3

Audio plays itself

Walk within range of a stop and the story begins.

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