Hartford is the capital of the US state of Connecticut. The area was explored in the early 17th century, and the Dutch West India Company established Fort Hoop in the southern part of present-day Hartford. English settlers came here in 1635 and founded the actual settlement, which in 1637 was named Hartford. In 1662, the city became the capital of the colony of Connecticut, and in the following decades and throughout the 18th century, the city grew to around 3,000 inhabitants.

From the middle of the 1800s, Hartford developed into a city with a significant industry, and among the many companies were Samuel Colt’s gun production and Albert Pope’s bicycle factory. The development brought more inhabitants, and from 13,500 citizens in 1850, the number rose to almost 80,000 in the year 1900. Growth continued through the 1900s, when downtown’s modern skyline with office buildings was also developed.

Today, Hartford is a city with an interesting downtown area with several sights from the city’s history. Many of them are located along or close to Main Street, which is Hartford’s north-south thoroughfare. Between modern high-rises is the Old State House, built 1792-1796 as the state of Connecticut’s second newly constructed government building. It was Charles Bulfinch, who designed the building in the so-called Federal style with a beautiful interior.

If you walk south along Main Street from the Old State House, you will reach Atheneum Square, where the skyscraper Travelers Tower stands tall with its 160 meters in height. The skyscraper was built 1906-1919, and it opened as the tallest building in New England and as the seventh tallest in the world. South of the square, you can visit the Wadsworth Atheneum, which is an art museum with large collections of, for example, European Baroque and French and American Impressionists.

South of the Wadsworth Atheneum is the Burr Mall Park and Hartford’s beaux-arts city hall, which was built in 1915. If you go west instead, you come to green areas where the Center Church is located. It was built in 1807 as the fourth church in Hartford’s oldest congregation, whose history dates to 1636. Several governors are buried in the adjoining cemetery, as well as Thomas Hooker, who founded The Connecticut Colony.

Continuing west through the large Bushnell Park, you come to Hartford’s probably best-known building, the Connecticut State Capitol. The State Capitol is the state’s government building and thereby the seat of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The building was built 1871-1878 in the late Victorian Eastlake style with the use of a marble cladding and large-scale decoration, which includes many statues and a beautiful rotunda under the equally fine dome.

South of the Connecticut State Capitol is the Museum of Connecticut History, which can be considered the state’s national museum with fine exhibitions about the state’s history and development as well as its role in the United States. From here you can continue to the Mark Twain House and Museum, which was home to Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his family from 1874 to 1891. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is better known as Mark Twain, and the house is open as a museum.

There are also good opportunities for a trip in recreational settings in and around Hartford. You can, for example, take a walk along the Riverwalk, which is close to downtown along the Connecticut River just east of downtown. To the west is Elizabeth, home to the city’s famous Rose Garden, where approximately 800 varieties of roses on approximately 15,000 bushes welcome visitors. The Rose Garden was established in 1904 and is the oldest municipal garden of its kind in the United States.