Salem

Salem's foundation is maritime. Salem Maritime National Historic Site holds a genuine historical distinction as the first unit ever designated a National Historic Site, preserving the Custom House, wharves and warehouses of a working historic waterfront from the city's era as a major trading port — an identity explicitly separate from the town's witch-trial history. That same maritime wealth built the Peabody Essex Museum, one of the oldest continuously operating museums in the United States, which has grown from its trading-history origins into a museum spanning a broad international art collection. Salem's literary identity runs alongside its maritime one at the House of the Seven Gables, a 1668 waterfront mansion that inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel of the same name; it operates today as a genuine historic house museum, complete with a secret staircase, rather than a commercial witch-tourism attraction. The city's most serious history is held with corresponding seriousness at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial: a small, solemn stone memorial dedicated in 1992, adjacent to the Old Burying Point cemetery, commemorating the 20 people executed in the 1692 Salem witch trials. It is deliberately understated, standing apart from the more theatrical commercial witch-tourism attractions found elsewhere in town, and it asks for the same quiet respect any memorial to real historical persecution and loss of life deserves.