Somerville neighborhood Digital Guide

Recommendations from Off The Beaten Path Food Tours including our Official Tasting Spots. Trust us, they're worth a visit.

Somerville is a popular city with many neighborhoods, including Davis Square and Union Square where we run our food tours. With close proximity to Boston and nearby Cambridge, Somerville covers 4.2 square miles and has roughly 75,000 residents. The city of Somerville is quite diverse which makes it an exciting place to live, and it is surrounded by the area’s top colleges including Tufts University and Lesley University. Founded in 1842, Somerville was once a part of Charlestown and often is referred to as the “City of Seven Hills” although there are actually 15 hills with 10 being the most prominent. Its food scene is rich and dynamic, with lots of entrepreneurs starting and testing new concepts here, and many different cuisines are represented from Nepalese to Greek to Spanish to Peruvian to Ethiopian.

There are many famous residents of Somerville including: Mary Sawyer from the poem Mary Had A Little Lamb, Barack Obama who lived here during his Harvard Law School days, H.P. Hood the dairy man, and Captain Kidd. In addition, during the American Revolution, Paul Revere ran to Somerville during his infamous Midnight Ride. A famous monument near Davis Square is Powder House, the oldest stone building in Massachusetts, and was used to store gunpowder until it was sold to the Tufts family in the 1800’s and also once housed storage for pickles! Another memorable historic landmark is Prospect Hill, where the first new flag of the United Colonies was raised by George Washington on January 1, 1776 – the reason why it’s called Union Square was because it was a recruitment and mustering site during the American Civil War for the Union armies. The country’s first millionaire lived in Somerville, Elias Hasket Derby.

One of the area’s other claims to fame is that Archibald Query invented marshmallow fluff while living in Somerville. Similarly, root beer was invented by Dr. Russell Cronwell who also founded Temple University and at one time called Somerville his home. In other firsts, the first residential telephone line was in Somerville, with phone numbers 1 and 2! On the other side of town from Davis Square, Assembly Row has become the home to some fun outlet shopping. It is called Assembly Row because Ford Motor Company once had an assembly plant at that location. Now check out our favorite spots in both Davis Square and Union Square in the tabs below!