When we went to Boston last year we purchased the city pass. City passes are often great ways to save money while you are visiting a city and they can get you to do things you might not have done. At $21 a ticket I don’t know that we would have done the Skywalk Observatory in Boston on its own, especially given our limited amount of time, but since it was part of the city pass we did go, and it was a really fun experience.
How to Get to the Skywalk Observatory in Boston
We almost did not make it to the Skywalk Observatory, even though we had the pass. The reason we almost missed it was that we could not find it. We had just come from visiting the Boston Public Library (incidentally, all Public Libraries in the U.S. trace their history back to Boston) and the Skywalk Observatory was supposed to be close, it just turns out that it was really hard to find.
The observatory is located on the 50th floor of a skyscraper known as the Prudential Center. It is a little confusing because the skyscraper actually rises out of the middle of a larger building complex. You can reach this complex by walking west from the Boston Public Library on Boylston street. In the middle of that next block we found an entrance in to the Prudential Center. From the entrance we took a some escalators up to a mall level with a lot of shops.
This is where it got confusing, we thought we would just be able to find an elevator and go up to the 50th floor, but no such luck. There are no elevators on that floor that actually go up inside the Prudential Center, and the signage is not clear. We actually had to find another set of escalators to get down to the parking level, and then find an elevator that would take us up to the top. We almost ran out of time and did not make it all (did I mention we had a baby in a stroller).
What You Will See at the Skywalk Observatory
Once you make it to the 50th floor, you can then show your ticket (or purchase one), pick up an audio guide, and make your way around a 360 degree view of the city of Boston.
The Skywalk Observatory is floor to ceiling windows all the way around. The building is square, so you make your way around four sides. There are multiple stops on each side that have numbers you can punch in to the audio guide to hear information about the city.
Of course, I am a big audio guide fan, so I tried to listen to as many stops as I could in the limited time that we had up there. It is a great experience to be able to look down on the city and hear what things you are looking at and a little of the history involved there. The views of the city really are amazing, it is hard to tell from the pictures how cool they are.
Sum Up
If you are doing the Boston city pass it is worth going to the Skywalk Observatory. Be aware that it is outside of the main historic area that most tourists to Boston frequent, so you have to plan to get there. In our case we were, of course, going to the library anyway so it made sense to do this at the same time.
I do not know that I would pay $21 to do this though, but if panoramic views are your thing than you might want to. In addition to the observatory views your ticket also grants you access to an exhibit and a theater that shows two short films.
