Sightseeing in Portsmouth

Portsmouth is ideally suited to exploring on foot. Here, small roads wind around in the oldest part of the city, and when you walk you’re close to both the gardens and the sense of heritage that the colonial brick buildings send forth. Three hundred years old, the town used to be a sailors’ place, rough and run down, but today it celebrates a seafaring heritage and a Revolutionary past as well as a festive present.

And if you choose to venture out of the core area of Portsmouth, the Seacoast Trolley Company will give you rides from historic Portsmouth and Strawberry Banke to Wallis Sands State Beach, Odiorne Point State Beach, Rye Beach, and New Castle Common, with intermediate stops, too. The fare is $2 for all ages, daily from mid-June to Labor Day. Look for the marked stops.

Portsmouth has three featured sections: the downtown and waterfront section, just past the chamber of commerce office; the South End, around the 10-acre Strawberry Banke living history museum; and the Haymarket Square area, where classic hotels rub shoulders with the library and older homes, even a mansion.

Parking is ample, both along the roads and in small lots scattered around the city. Try to start somewhere near Market Square, with its scrumptious bakery and small outdoor tables. You can still ride in a horse and carriage here, a fine way to tour in style! The carriage usually waits by North Church for riders in good weather. North Church is a reference point for touring, as you can see its high white spire from much of the city. Stroll the historic tour and plan to munch in Prescott Park on the waterfront, where there are outdoor vendors in the summer.

Sights in Historic Portsmouth

When you tour the historic sections of town, you’re bound to arrive at Strawberry Banke. (This was the first name Portsmouth had, thanks to the berries that greeted settlers along the river bank.) Strawberry Banke is a 10-acre living history museum open daily from May through October (433-1100; recent admission prices were $12 for adults, $8 for children 7-17, children ages six and under free, $28 for a family). It also reopens the first two weekends of December for a traditional Candlelight Stroll through the decorated grounds and houses. From almost anywhere in Portsmouth there are signs pointing to its location, opposite Prescott Park, which is on the bank of the Piscataqua River. The museum has 30 houses from the 17th to the 20th century, each allowed to tell a story about its inhabitants, a time period, or crafts and other parts of daily life. Special events include an annual decorative arts symposium, heirloom heritage plant sale, military encampment, boat-building demonstrations, and a brewers’ festival in October.

At the start of the 20th century, Portsmouth was known as the ale-making capital of the country, and it now has several breweries. The Portsmouth Brewery is a brew pub at 56 Market Street (431-1115); Smuttynose Brewing Company (named after one island in the Isles of Shoals) is at 225 Heritage Way (436-4026); and Redhook Ale Brewery offers regular tours at 35 Corporate Drive (at the entrance to Pease International Tradeport off Route 16; 430-8600).

The Children’s Museum of Portsmouth at 280 Marcy Street (436-3853) is a year-round science and arts museum with interactive exhibits, family-oriented performances and workshops. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday, 1 to 5 pm. In summer they are also open on Mondays from 10 am to 5 pm. Visit their Web site at www.rscs.net/children/home.html).

Bookstores abound, with antiquarian ones downtown: the Book Guild of Portsmouth (58State Street, (436-1758), and the Portsmouth Book Shop (1 Islington Street, 433-4406). Don’t miss the unusual collection of maps and travel books at Gulliver’s (7 Commercial Alley, 431-5556; e-mail gullivers@ttlc.net; www.gulliversbooks.com). And for a thoroughly up-to-the-minute gathering of books, there’s Bookland (433-1616) at the mall south of town.