The capital of Massachusetts is Boston, the city where the Boston Tea Party took place in 1773.
Boston was founded by English Puritan settlers in 1630 on a peninsula in Massachusetts Bay. It quickly became a major port and the political center of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The city’s location helped make it an important hub for trade, printing, education, and resistance to British policies.
On December 16, 1773, colonists protesting the Tea Act boarded ships in Boston Harbor and threw chests of tea into the water. The event became one of the best-known acts of resistance before the American Revolution and contributed to Britain’s punitive Coercive Acts.
Boston is also home to institutions including Harvard University in nearby Cambridge and the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill. Salem, another historic Massachusetts city, is often associated with the 1692 witch trials, but it is not the state capital.