The third-oldest cemetery in Boston and easily the most visited, the Granary holds the bones of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, the five victims of the Boston Massacre, and most of Benjamin Franklin's family (Franklin himself is buried in Philadelphia). The stones are not always in the right places — Victorian groundskeepers rearranged them for neatness — but the inhabitants are real.
The slate markers, many carved with the winged death's heads typical of seventeenth-century Puritan New England, are the more interesting part of a walk through. A handful of them carry epitaphs sharp enough to startle: small reminders that the early Bostonians thought constantly about death. The central Franklin obelisk, marking the grave of Benjamin's parents Josiah and Abiah, was added in 1827.
The yard sits behind Park Street Church on the Freedom Trail. Free, open daily; the gate closes around dusk.