10 Famous Movie Locations in Boston

Home to Boston’s beloved baseball team, the Red Sox, Fenway Park on its own is a major city landmark. Memorable movies shot here include Spotlight (2015), The Town (2010), Fever Pitch (2005), Moneyball (2011), and the multiple award-winning drama Good Will Hunting (1997).

Walk in the footsteps of your favorite characters and relive some of the scenes at the park during off-season tours, which let you see and understand the park’s history from a different perspective. Or, during the season, grab tickets to a game and experience the unbeatable atmosphere of an MLB crowd.

Head up to the northern side of the Boston Common on Beacon Street for a memorable scene in Martin Scorsese’s universally acclaimed crime thriller, The Departed (2006). It’s where Colin Sullivan, played by Matt Damon, sits on a park bench with the great golden dome of the Massachusetts State House looming ahead. The magnificent landmark became a symbol of his great antagonistic ambitions as a gangster mole embedded within the Massachusetts State Police force.

As well as appearing in The Departed, the building’s interior was heavily used in the courthouse drama, The Verdict (1982).

Seemingly derelict, the Whittenton Mills Complex was once a hub of the textile industry. On its namesake street in Taunton, an hour’s drive south from Downtown Boston, it’s now home to a variety of small businesses, while also retaining its status as a historical site.

The old-fashioned brick facades and narrow windows made these historical buildings an ideal location for portraying the Dachau concentration camp in the waking visions of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Martin Scorsese’s noir-like, brain-picking thriller, Shutter Island (2008).

As Boston’s green and blooming urban oasis, the Boston Public Garden has been used for its scenic settings in a few movies, most prominently Good Will Hunting (1997).

A memorable scene from the movie has Matt Damon’s titular character sitting on a bench in the park listening to Robin Williams’ character during one of the most famous monologues in cinema. That bench now serves as a memorial to Williams, who won an Oscar for this role. The park’s also the favorite spot of Seth Macfarlane’s foul-mouthed teddy bear in Ted (2012).

This magnificent Lutheran landmark in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston stands strikingly tall with its tower and features Neo-Gothic architecture. The Church of the Covenant is also home to one of the largest Tiffany glass windows in America along with glass mosaics and numerous other beautiful decorations.

It served as a church setting for Norman Reedus’ and Sean Patrick Flanery’s characters in the violent yet cult-classic Boondock Saints (1999). Some scenes were shot among the pews and outside its street-side facade.

This cozy and intimate local bakery and coffee spot on Shawmut Avenue is where parts of Oscar-winning Spotlight (2015) were shot.

The movie is about a team of Boston Globe reporters covering the investigation into the Catholic child-abuse scandal at the turn of the millennium, and also features street shots of Boston’s Charlestown and the South End. The South End Buttery served as a backdrop to a scene where Rachel McAdams’s reporter character met up with a victim of the molestation scandal.

This is one of the scenic bridges that cross over the Charles River, a long river that flows from Middlesex County to the Atlantic via Boston Harbor. It’s easy to see why it captured the film-makers’ imagination as you stand on the bridge and snap pictures of the river view.

The Social Network (2010) shows the Beacon Street Bridge, overlooking Boston’s Charles River, in a scene that illustrates a Harvard varsity pairs practice. Actual wide footage of the regatta was combined with intercut scenes that were also shot on the Charles River.

Anchored by the world-famous Harvard University in the heart of Cambridge, Harvard Square has been an iconic filming location for so many movies that it would be impossible to name them all. A triangular plaza bursting with boutiques, award-winning restaurants, and historic theaters, you’d be wise to allow yourself the entire day to explore.

Sit on iconic seating featured in Good Will Hunting (1997) and watch the world go by. Though it’s now sadly closed, you can still gaze upon the beloved Out of Town News newsstand that featured in With Honors (1994) and The Paper Chase (1973). Classic romance fans will love exploring the area where Oliver and Jenny fell in love in the Love Story (1970).  

Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece drama mystery, Mystic River (2003), featured most of Boston’s neighborhoods. The movie’s opening kidnapping scene was shot on Condor Street in East Boston, and the face-off between Tim Robbins’ and Sean Penn’s characters was shot at a made-up bar on Border Street.

The body of Katie Markum, played by Emmy Rossum, was discovered in the derelict old bear dens at the north end of Franklin Park. The bears are long gone, but the place retains an eerie vibe with its iron bars and wall reliefs.

One of the movies that showed off Ben Affleck’s great directing skills was Gone Baby Gone (2007). Murphy's Law was chosen from the many Irish bars in Boston for one of the movie’s most climactic scenes.

The scene depicts a masked gunman threatening Titus Welliver’s character as he starts to speak up about “what really happened” to Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, played by Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan. Affleck also managed to include some of the real Murphy's Law bar staff in various scenes as extras throughout the film.