Standing at one end of the Paul Revere Mall is a church famous not only for being the oldest one in Boston (built in 1723) but for housing the two lanterns that glimmered from its steeple on the night of April 18, 1775. This is Christ Church, or the Old North, where Paul Revere and the young sexton Robert Newman managed that night to signal the departure by water of the British regulars to Lexington and Concord. Newman, carrying the lanterns, ascended the steeple (the original tower blew down in 1804 and was replaced; the present one was put up in 1954 after the replacement was destroyed in a hurricane) while Revere began his clandestine trip by boat across the Charles.

Although William Price designed the structure after studying Christopher Wren's London churches, the Old North -- which still has an active Episcopal congregation (including descendants of the Reveres) -- is an impressive building in its own right. Inside, note the gallery and the graceful arrangement of pews (reserved in colonial times for the families that rented them); the bust of George Washington, pronounced by the Marquis de Lafayette to be the truest likeness of the general he ever saw; the brass chandeliers, made in Amsterdam in 1700 and installed here in 1724; and the clock, the oldest still running in an American public building. The pews -- No. 54 was the Revere family pew -- are the highest in the United States because of the little charcoal-burning foot warmers (used to accommodate parishioners back when). Try to visit when changes are rung on the bells, after the 11 AM Sunday service; they bear the inscription, We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North America. On the Sunday closest to April 18, descendants of the patriots reenact the raising of the lanterns in the church belfry during a special evening service.

Behind the church is the Washington Memorial Garden, where volunteers cultivate a plot devoted to plants and flowers favored in the 18th century. The garden is studded with several unusual commemorative plaques, including one for the Rev. George Burrough, who was hanged in the Salem witch trials in 1692; it was his great-grandson, Robert Newman, who carried the famous pair of lanterns to the steeple. In another niche hangs the "Third Lantern," dedicated in 1976 to mark the country's bicentennial celebration.