Connecticut is small enough to cross in an afternoon and dense with history the whole way. The Constitution State holds the last wooden whaleship afloat, the homes of the writers who shaped American letters, and battlefields from the Revolution.
I taught American history for a living before joining my sons to film these places, and Connecticut rewards that interest at every turn. The 20 landmarks below run from a clapboard tavern of 1692 to a working seaport museum.
Here is our ranked list of the best landmarks and historic sites in Connecticut, counting down to number one.
Connecticut Landmarks At A Glance
A quick guide for planning. The shoreline holds the maritime and military sites, while Hartford anchors the literary landmarks. Most of the state is within an hour’s drive of the next stop.
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| Landmark | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Mystic Seaport Museum | Maritime museum | Mystic |
| Weir Farm NHP | Art park | Wilton |
| Mark Twain House | Historic house | Hartford |
| Coltsville NHP | Industrial history | Hartford |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe House | Historic house | Hartford |
| New England Natl Scenic Trail | Hiking trail | Statewide |
| Submarine Force Museum | Naval museum | Groton |
| Nathan Hale Homestead | Historic house | Coventry |
| Fort Griswold Battlefield | Revolutionary site | Groton |
| Washington-Rochambeau Route | Historic trail | Statewide |
| Fort Trumbull State Park | Historic fort | New London |
| Osborne Homestead | Historic house | Derby |
| Harkness Mansion (Eolia) | Historic estate | Waterford |
| Putnam Cottage | Historic tavern | Greenwich |
| Glebe House | Historic house | Woodbury |
| Charles W. Morgan | Historic whaleship | Mystic |
| Black Rock State Park | State park | Watertown |
| Mashantucket Pequot Museum | Indigenous museum | Mashantucket |
| Sheffield Island Lighthouse | Lighthouse | Norwalk |
| Yale University | Historic campus | New Haven |
20. Yale University
Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest university in the country and a Gothic landmark in its own right in New Haven.
Its free museums, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Peabody Museum among them, make the campus worth a day even if you never went to college here.
19. Sheffield Island Lighthouse
Built in 1868 at the mouth of Norwalk Harbor, this granite lighthouse guided ships on Long Island Sound until 1902.
A seasonal ferry runs out to the island, where you can tour the keeper’s house and look back at the skyline.
18. Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center
Opened in 1998 by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, this is one of the largest Native American museums in the country.
Its life-size dioramas of a 16th-century Pequot village and the account of the 1637 Pequot War make it an essential stop for understanding the region’s first peoples.
17. Black Rock State Park
One of Connecticut’s oldest state parks, set in the rolling Western Highlands near Watertown. It covers about 440 acres of the larger Mattatuck State Forest.
A pond for swimming and trails up the ridges make it a easy outdoor break between historic stops.
16. Charles W. Morgan
Launched in 1841, the Morgan is the last wooden whaleship in the world and the oldest surviving American merchant vessel. Only the USS Constitution is an older American ship still afloat.
Restored and seaworthy, she is the centerpiece of Mystic Seaport and a National Historic Landmark.
15. Glebe House & Gertrude Jekyll Garden
This 18th-century Woodbury house is where the American Episcopal Church chose its first bishop in 1783. It became one of the nation’s earliest house museums.
Its grounds hold the only surviving Gertrude Jekyll garden in the United States, designed by the famed English horticulturist.
14. Putnam Cottage
Also called Knapp Tavern, this Greenwich building dates to about 1700 and served as a tavern on the Boston Post Road.
Legend ties it to General Israel Putnam’s daring 1779 escape from British troops down a steep ravine nearby.
13. Harkness Mansion & Park
The 42-room mansion called Eolia was the summer estate of the Harkness family, Standard Oil heirs, built in the early 1900s above Long Island Sound.
Now Harkness Memorial State Park, the gardens and shoreline are open to the public in Waterford.
12. Osborne Homestead
This Derby home belonged to Frances Osborne Kellogg, one of the first women to run major industrial companies in Connecticut in the early 20th century.
It is preserved as a decorative-arts museum, surrounded by the Kellogg Environmental Center grounds.
11. Fort Trumbull State Park
Guarding the Thames River at New London, the current granite fort dates to the 1840s, though fortifications stood here from 1775.
Benedict Arnold’s forces captured an earlier fort here in 1781. Today the restored fort and its riverfront are a state park.
10. Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route
This national historic trail traces the 1781 march of American and French troops to Yorktown, the campaign that ended the Revolution.
The full route runs more than 600 miles across nine states. Connecticut preserves the segment Rochambeau’s army crossed on the way south.
9. Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park
In September 1781, British forces led by Benedict Arnold stormed this Groton fort and killed many of its surrendering defenders in the Battle of Groton Heights.
A tall monument now marks the site. It is one of the few Revolutionary battlefields in New England.
8. Nathan Hale Homestead
The Coventry farmhouse of the family of Nathan Hale, the Continental Army officer hanged by the British as a spy in 1776 at age 21.
His reported last words, regret at having only one life to give for his country, made him an early American martyr. The 1776 house is open for tours.
7. Submarine Force Library & Museum
In Groton, the cradle of the U.S. submarine force, this is the only submarine museum run directly by the Navy.
Its centerpiece is the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, which you can walk through. Admission is free.
6. New England National Scenic Trail
Following the old Metacomet and Mattabesett ridge trails, this 215-mile national scenic trail runs from Long Island Sound to the New Hampshire line.
The Connecticut traprock ridges deliver some of the best views in the state for a modest climb.
5. Harriet Beecher Stowe House
This Hartford home belonged to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the 1852 novel whose portrait of slavery helped turn Northern opinion against it.
The restored house and its exhibits trace how one writer’s work pushed a nation toward reckoning. It sits next door to the Mark Twain House.
4. Coltsville National Historical Park
Samuel Colt’s Hartford arms factory, marked by its blue onion dome, made the revolvers that reshaped 19th-century America for better and worse.
Congress authorized this national historical park in 2014 to tell the full story of the Colt enterprise and the workers who built it.
3. Mark Twain House
Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, built this elaborate Hartford home and lived here from 1874 to 1891, his most productive years.
He wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer under this roof. The Tiffany-decorated interior is a National Historic Landmark.
2. Weir Farm National Historical Park
The home and studio of American Impressionist Julian Alden Weir, this is one of only two national parks devoted to the visual arts.
You can paint where Weir painted; the park lends supplies. The Wilton landscape still looks much as it did in his canvases.
1. Mystic Seaport Museum
Our number one is the largest maritime museum in the country, a re-created 19th-century coastal village along the Mystic River.
Founded in 1929, it keeps the Charles W. Morgan, a working shipyard, and a fleet of historic vessels. Plan to spend the day among the docks and tradespeople.
Plan a full day: board the Charles W. Morgan, watch the shipwrights at the preservation shipyard, then walk the village shops as they would have looked in the 1800s.
More Things To Do
Once the landmarks are covered, Connecticut keeps going. A few more ways to round out the visit:
- Walk Yale’s free museums in New Haven, then find the city’s famous pizza.
- Ride the seasonal ferry to Sheffield Island for the lighthouse and a clambake.
- Hike a traprock ridge on the New England Trail for the Sound view.
- See Connecticut’s national park sites for more protected history.
You should know that this guide does not come out of thin air. My sons Will and Jim have spent their adult lives exploring America’s national parks and public lands destinations.
Will and Jim have worked with the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the USDA, and the U.S. Forest Service creating films on the places and issues that matter. In 2018, after a career teaching history, I joined them to help tell the stories behind these sites.
