Experience the best of Hartford

Hartford sits on the west bank of the Connecticut River in the middle of the state, and since the nineteenth century it has been known as the insurance capital of the country. The Connecticut State Capitol, a Gothic Revival building of marble and granite crowned by a gold-leaf dome, overlooks Bushnell Park, and the Old State House of 1796 stands on Main Street.

Mark Twain lived in a many-gabled house on Farmington Avenue from 1874 to 1891, and next door stands the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Wadsworth Atheneum, founded in 1842, is among the oldest public art museums in the country. The rose garden at Elizabeth Park is one of the oldest municipal rose gardens in the United States, and the blue onion dome of the old Colt armory rises over the river flats.

Central Connecticut claims the steamed cheeseburger, and Hartford's Puerto Rican, Jamaican and Portuguese communities supply bakeries and restaurants that go well beyond the diner menu. Cider doughnuts appear with the first cool days of autumn, when the hills along the river turn red, and winters bring real snow.