Where to Stay in Burlington, Vermont

What is Burlington known for?

Burlington sits on Lake Champlain as Vermont's commercial hub and county seat of Chittenden County, a college town whose small scale keeps the streets intimate rather than metropolitan. The ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center takes Lake Champlain as its subject, while Centennial Field and Gutterson Fieldhouse anchor the sporting calendar of a place that stays small on the map. No other Vermont city is bigger, and no state's biggest city is smaller than this one.

What are the main landmarks in Burlington?

Burlington's landmarks are buildings rather than views. The Unitarian Church, the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, Centennial Field and Gutterson Fieldhouse cover the range between worship, exhibition and sport, and four houses join them on the same list. Those four are the House at 44 Front Street, the LeFerriere House, the Mintzer House and Stannard House.

One more sits outside the pattern. The Methodist Episcopal Church of Winooski carries a neighbouring name yet counts among the landmarks recorded for Burlington.

What is the history of Burlington?

Burlington dates from 1783. The founding year is the anchor the record gives, and around it sits a straightforward account: a settlement on Lake Champlain that became the seat of Chittenden County and the largest city in Vermont. Scale is the oddity here.

Burlington remains the smallest city in the United States to hold the rank of largest within its own state, a distinction that says as much about Vermont as it does about the city. Older Burlington survives in its houses. Stannard House, the LeFerriere House and the Mintzer House are all recorded landmarks, as is the House at 44 Front Street, and together they account for most of what the landmark roll keeps from the city's building stock.

Worship is the other strand. The Unitarian Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church of Winooski both sit on the list, the second carrying a name other than the city's own. Two sporting grounds close the list.

Centennial Field and Gutterson Fieldhouse stand among the landmarks alongside the churches and the houses, and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center adds the lake itself to the record.

Where is Burlington?

Burlington stands on Lake Champlain. The Canada-United States border lies some 45 miles north of Burlington, and Montreal stands about 95 miles off in the same direction. The county around it is Chittenden.

Within Vermont the city covers a compact area, roughly forty square kilometres in all, a small footprint for a state's largest city. Lake Champlain is the one landform that matters here, and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center exists on the strength of it.

What is the climate of Burlington?

Lake Champlain does the moderating here. Water of that size holds warmth into the autumn and gives it back slowly, so the shore at Burlington tends to run a shade milder than the higher ground inland in Vermont. Winter still bites.

The city lies only some 45 miles south of the Canada-United States border, which is the plainest measure of how far north it sits. The season pattern is a long cold one and a short warm one, with Lake Champlain blunting the extremes at either end.

How do you get to Burlington?

The lake and the border frame every approach. The run down from Montreal covers about 95 miles, and the Canada-United States border sits roughly 45 miles north of the city, which makes the northern approach the shortest of the long ones. Lake Champlain complicates the map.

Anything approaching from the west has to work around the water or cross it, which is why the lake matters as much to the journey as to the view. The city itself covers about forty square kilometres, small enough that the Unitarian Church, Front Street and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center all fall inside one walkable stretch.