Winter Festival Walking Tours

During the 28th annual Newport Winter Festival, New England’s largest winter extravaganza, Newport History Tours, the partnership between the Newport Historical Society and the Newport Restoration Foundation, will guide visitors through three centuries of Newport’s history. The line-up of daily walking tours includes: the Lantern Tour of Colonial Newport, which is presented exclusively during Newport Winter Festival, Creative Survival, a tour about Newport’s early African American community, and the family-friendly History Detectives tour, along with other popular favorites.

Lantern Tour of Colonial Newport
Friday February 12 and Friday February 19 at 4:30pm
Feel transported through time to the heyday of this thriving colonial metropolis on a lantern-lit stroll.

Creative Survival: 18th & 19th Century African Community in Newport
Saturday February 13 at 11am
Discover the early history of Newport’s people of color, enslaved and free. This tour looks at the places where slaves lived and labored, along with locations where free blacks built their enterprises and supported a new local industry. It concludes in the country’s oldest intact African-American graveyard, “God’s Little Acre.”

Discover Colonial Newport 
Sunday February 14; Thursday, February 18; Sunday February 21 at 11am
Hear stories of revolution and ruin, struggles for religious liberty and remarkable entrepreneurship among Newport’s diverse people.

History Detective: A Family Tour
Monday February 15 at 11am
Discover Newport’s colonial history, its religious and racial diversity, its role in the American Revolution, and its remarkable architecture on a kid-friendly tour. Each family will complete a special History Detective workbook, recording observations from clues.

Road to Independence 
Tuesday February 16 and Friday February 19 at 11am
Riots and rebellion, enemies and allies! Learn about Newport’s role in the American Revolution.

Rogues and Scoundrels
Wednesday February 17 and Saturday February 20 at 11am
See where scoundrels lived, pirates profited and criminals were punished. Find out why this colony was known as “Rogue’s Island.”