Hanover is a small college town on the Connecticut River in western New Hampshire, shaped in every meaningful way by Dartmouth College. The Ivy League campus sits right at the heart of town, its wide green flanked by Georgian brick buildings and easily walkable from Main Street. The combination gives Hanover an intellectual energy and cultural calendar well out of proportion to its population of around eleven thousand.
The Hood Museum of Art holds one of the oldest and largest college art collections in the United States — Assyrian reliefs, an outstanding Native American collection, and strong holdings in American and European art. Next door, the Hopkins Center for the Arts brings in theatre, dance, film, and concerts year-round. Baker-Berry Library is worth visiting not just for research but for the Jose Clemente Orozco murals in its basement reserve room: a sweeping fresco cycle called The Epic of American Civilization, painted in 1932–34, that stops people cold.
Main Street runs along the green and has good bookshops, restaurants, and the kind of well-stocked outfitters you expect in a trail town. The Appalachian Trail passes directly through Hanover — crossing the green on its 2,190-mile journey from Georgia to Maine — so in spring and summer you will encounter thru-hikers resupplying at the co-op and drying their gear on the grass. The Connecticut River marks the Vermont state line just west of town, and the Ledyard Bridge links Hanover to Norwich across the water.