Salem's Dark History & Maritime Glory

Founded in 1799 as the East India Marine Society — a club for sea captains who had crossed either Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope — the Peabody Essex Museum holds 1.8 million objects brought back from the trade routes. The Yin Yu Tang, a complete 200-year-old Chinese merchant's house dismantled and reconstructed inside the museum, is the only such house outside China. The maritime gallery's collection of ship models, navigational instruments, and trade goods defines the Golden Age of New England commerce.

The 2,000-foot granite wharf into Salem Harbor is the last surviving example of the long commercial wharves that made Salem America's sixth-largest city in 1790 — at its peak, more cargo cleared Salem customs than New York's. The Derby Mansion at the head of the wharf and the Custom House (where Nathaniel Hawthorne worked as a surveyor) are both intact.

A Salem restaurant in the restored 1818 Naumkeag Exchange building on Essex Street, serving New England seafood — Ipswich clams, Gloucester haddock, North Shore swordfish — in a room with the original merchant-era plasterwork intact. The clam chowder is the benchmark version in a city that takes chowder seriously. Note: Turner's Seafood at Ledger and Ledger Restaurant & Bar (dinner) share the same address at 7 Central St but operate as distinct concepts — Turner's is the seafood bar counter, Ledger is the main dining room. They are not the same experience.

A 1992 memorial designed by James Cutler adjacent to the Charter Street Cemetery, with 20 granite benches inscribed with the names and execution dates of the 19 people hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692. The Charter Street Cemetery contains the graves of Judge John Hathorne — Nathaniel Hawthorne's ancestor, whose guilt drove the novelist to add the 'w' to his name — and Governor Simon Bradstreet.

The 1668 Turner-Ingersoll Mansion on Derby Street — the oldest surviving 17th-century wooden mansion in New England — was the model for Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1851 novel. The house tour includes Hawthorne's birthplace (moved to the site), the secret staircase, and the view of Salem Harbor from the roof walk that Hawthorne described in the novel's opening pages.

A contemporary American restaurant in the historic Naumkeag Exchange, with a serious craft cocktail program built around New England spirits and a wine list that favors small domestic producers. The kitchen's wood-fired dishes and house-made charcuterie are the evening anchors.