This page collects a range of self-guided tours, films, and slideshows, which allow you to virtually visit Providence and locations in the region:
New Bedford’s Whaling Waterfront
As a way to recover a sense of New Bedford’s whaling waterfront Brown University doctoral student Rebecca Morisseau created an online walking tour that offers visitors the opportunity to engage with historic images and maps to assess how the city has changed (or not!) since the nineteenth century. The tour provides historical images juxtaposed with contemporary maps and photographs for each of its stops. It also includes a scavenger hunt, to encourage visitors to look at their surroundings in new, more careful ways.
Providence’s Heritage: Above and Below Ground
Below are two student-produced tours from the February 1, 2019 event Providence’s Heritage: Above and Below Ground, hosted by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. This event was a part of the Year of the City, a 12-month-long, citywide effort to uncover the unseen stories behind Providence’s storefronts, residences and high rises.
- A Walk Through Downtown Providence: Stories of Selected Historic Buildings
By Sasha Pinto as part of ARCH 1900 – The Archaeology of College Hill - Chinese American ‘Food Heritage’: Restaurants and Grocery Stores in “Greater Providence”
A tour of Chinese American food heritage by Quinton Huang as part of ARCH 0317 – Heritage in the Metropolis: Remembering and Preserving the Urban Past
Explore Ancient Greece in Providence: A Walking Tour of “Greek Temples”
This tour was developed by Dr. Pınar Durgun, a Brown Archaeology alumna and was initially lead on October 19, 2018.
Classical Providence: Landscapes, Monuments, Rediscovery
A film by Reem Yusuf and Harry Anastopulos produced November 5, 2007 as part of ARCH 0420 – Archaeologies of the Greek Past
On Firm Foundations
The catalog of the exhibit curated in 2022 by doctoral student Erynn Bentley provides an overview of the Brown University excavation of The Sack House, located on land that is now part of the Moses Brown School on the East Side of Providence, RI.
Petra at the Joukowsky
A tour of artifacts from Petra housed in Rhode Island Hall and information about the site of Petra more broadly by Brown University students Rainey Zimmermann, Janie Merrick, and Oliver Nolan as part of the Spring 2019 course ARCH 1475 – Petra: Ancient Wonder, Modern Challenge
Rhode Tour
You can find more tours at the Rhode Tour website (www.rhodetour.org). Rhode Tour is a statewide mobile historical smartphone application produced by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. Captivating places, intriguing people, and exciting events fill Rhode Island’s history. Rhode Tour offers a new way to interact with these untold tales of the state’s past. Using stories, sounds, and images, history comes alive on Rhode Tour.