About Cambridge

Located just across the river from Boston, Cambridge is a quirky, intellectual, and multicultural city in the shadows of the world’s most prestigious universities – Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

Harvard, America’s oldest university,  and MIT, with over 50 Nobel Prize winners,  attracts students, professors and researchers to Cambridge from around the globe. These academics mingle with a diverse multi-ethnic local population (over 50 languages are spoken in the city, and its public school students come from 82 different countries) to create a true urban cultural melting pot.  Packed with bookstores, cafes, museums, pubs, student hang-outs, unique shops, and music venues, the city has been called “Boston’s Left Bank.” Cambridge also has arguably the most wide-ranging selection of international restaurants in America – from North African, to Portuguese, to Indian, to Tibetan and everything in between.

Founded in 1630 as the Colonial village of Newtowne, Cambridge was the first planned town in English North America. The marshland was a perfect location because the Charles River was deep enough for large ocean-bound ships, while the winding channel’s limited maneuverability acted as protection against pirates. The city’s name was later changed to Cambridge after the famous England university attended by the town’s Puritan founders. Today, the city - with its red brick cobble-stone sidewalks - still retains much of its old-world charm. Many of the original streets are still in use today, and there are countless homes and buildings that date back to the 1700s.