New Haven's stories run with the harbor and the ridges. They'll tell you the elms once arched right over the streets, which is how the Elm City got its name. They'll tell you about the Great Shippe that sailed for England in 1646 and was never seen again — except, the legend says, as a phantom ship in the clouds over the harbor. They'll point up at West Rock and the regicides' cave, and down at the brownstone lighthouse on the Sound, and then they'll argue, at length, about whose apizza is best.
The Elm City carried its history out loud. The Green and its three churches still mark the center square of Brockett's 1638 plan; the ridges of East and West Rock still rise over the rooftops; and the 1847 Five Mile Point Light still stands at the harbor mouth in Lighthouse Point Park, with its old carousel and its migrating birds. Somewhere along the way the city perfected the coal-fired, charred-crust pizza it calls apizza, argued over more passionately here than almost anywhere. Through four centuries, New Haven kept its colonial bones and its salt-water edge.
Why People Visit New Haven Connecticut
People come to New Haven for the layered history and the harbor — the first planned city in America, the regicides' cave, the lighthouse on the Sound — and for the museums, theaters, and the apizza the city argues about endlessly. It is compact, walkable, and deep: four centuries of New England on Long Island Sound.
