🇺🇸 United States · New England
Burlington is the most urban and easygoing face of Vermont: a small but vibrant city looking out over great Lake Champlain, with the Green Mountains on one side and New York's Adirondacks silhouetted on the far shore. Despite its modest size, it is the cultural, academic and culinary heart of the state, known for its progressive, eco-minded, community spirit and for a quality of life that places it among the most pleasant cities in the northeastern United States.
Its soul beats on Church Street Marketplace, a pedestrian street full of cafés, shops, restaurants and street musicians, and on the Waterfront, the lakeside promenade on Lake Champlain where the sunsets over the water, with the mountains behind, are a spectacle in themselves. Burlington is also a land of craft breweries, of Ben & Jerry's ice cream (born a few kilometers away) and of local products such as maple syrup, in a region proud of its farm-to-table food.
This guide covers Burlington with a practical eye: what to see in the city and on the lakeshore, how to make the most of summer and the autumn foliage, how to get there from the airport and nearby cities, where to stay and how to combine it with Stowe, the Green Mountains or a getaway to Montreal. It is the perfect base for discovering northern Vermont.
The Burlington region, on the shore of Lake Champlain, was inhabited for millennia by Algonquian-speaking Indigenous peoples, in particular the Western Abenaki, who lived from fishing, hunting and farming around the lake. The lake bears the name of the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who reached the area in 1609, when the region was part of the contest between the French and English colonies. Burlington was formally chartered as a town in 1763 and grew in the 19th century as a commercial port on Lake Champlain, thriving on the timber trade and water transport, above all after the opening of canals that connected the lake with the Hudson River and with Canada. The founding of the University of Vermont (UVM) in 1791 —the same year Vermont joined the United States as the 14th state— shaped its academic profile. Over the course of the 20th century, the city evolved from an industrial and port center into a city of services, education and culture, earning a reputation for its progressive politics (Bernie Sanders was its mayor in the 1980s) and its green ethos. Today Burlington is the largest city in Vermont and a benchmark for quality of life in the northeast. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Green Mountain State: Abenaki land, briefly an independent republic and the first territory of the future nation to abolish adult slavery, home of maple syrup, blazing autumns and the ski resorts of Stowe and Killington.
Read the history of Vermont →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before the city existed, the shores of the great lake that today bears Champlain's name were inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Indigenous peoples, in particular the Western Abenaki. For them, the lake was a transport route, a source of fish and an axis of life: they lived from fishing, hunting, gathering and growing corn, beans and squash, in villages spread along the shores and the surrounding valleys.
The first European to leave a record of the lake was the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who reached its waters in 1609, as part of the French expansion from Canada. The lake took his name, and the region found itself in a zone of friction between the French colonies to the north and the English colonies of New England and New York. For more than a century, that Lake Champlain corridor was the setting for rivalries, shifting alliances with Indigenous peoples and colonial conflicts.
The arrival of Europeans brought, as across the whole continent, profound consequences for the Abenaki: epidemics, pressure on their territories and their forced involvement in the wars between the powers. Even so, their thousand-year presence is a fundamental part of the history of the Lake Champlain region on which Burlington would later rise.
Burlington was formally established as a town in 1763, as part of the colonial-era land grants, on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. Its location —a good natural harbor on one of the great lakes of the northeast— would shape its destiny as a commercial center. The name is usually associated with the influential Allen family, linked to the founding and early development of the area, in the same region where Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys operated.
The territory of Vermont went through a singular political process in those years: after declaring itself an independent republic in 1777 (with its own constitution), it finally joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791. That same year, 1791, the University of Vermont (UVM) was founded in Burlington, one of the oldest institutions of higher education in New England, which would give the city its academic and cultural profile.
The university, set on the hill overlooking the lake, drew students, professors and intellectual life, and became an engine of Burlington's growth. That combination of commercial port on the lake and university town defined the character of the place from early on: practical and mercantile on one side, open and cultured on the other.
During the 19th century, Burlington lived through its great period of growth thanks to its port on Lake Champlain. The city became an important center of the lumber trade, drawing on the region's forests and the natural outlet the lake offered for shipping the product. Lake Champlain worked as a genuine commercial highway of the northeast.
The opening of canals was decisive. The Champlain Canal connected the lake with the Hudson River and, by extension, with New York and the ocean, while other routes linked it northward with Canada. That navigation network turned Burlington into a hub of trade between the United States and Canada, and timber, grain and other goods passed across its docks. The city prospered, filling with warehouses, shops and elegant Victorian residences, many of which still stand in its historic neighborhoods.
The arrival of the railroad, later on, added overland connections and consolidated Burlington's role as a regional center. That 19th-century prosperity explains a good part of the city's architectural heritage and the base on which its later development would rest, when the old lumber port gradually became something else.
Over the course of the 20th century, Burlington went through the transition many northeastern cities lived: the decline of its old industrial and port profile and the search for a new identity. The lumber trade lost weight, industries changed, and the city reoriented itself increasingly toward services, education —with the University of Vermont as the great engine— and, later, tourism and technology.
In that process, Burlington forged the progressive, green, community-minded image it is known for today. A symbolic milestone was the election of Bernie Sanders as the city's mayor in 1981, an independent, left-wing political figure who would later gain a national profile; his administration drove community development projects and the reclaiming of the waterfront. The revitalization of the Lake Champlain Waterfront, turning the port's old industrial land into parks, promenades and public spaces, was one of the city's great changes in recent decades.
The pedestrianization of Church Street to create Church Street Marketplace, the consolidation of the cultural and university scene, and the flourishing of craft beer and farm-to-table cooking finished defining contemporary Burlington: a small but vibrant city, proud of its quality of life and its local character.
Today's Burlington is the largest and most dynamic city in Vermont, but it keeps a human scale and a strong sense of community. Its downtown, with the pedestrian Church Street Marketplace, and its frontage on Lake Champlain, with the Waterfront and its sunsets over the Adirondacks, have made it one of the most pleasant urban destinations in the northeastern United States, repeatedly recognized for its quality of life.
The city's culinary and cultural identity has become part of its brand. Burlington is the birthplace of Ben & Jerry's, the ice cream born in 1978 that turned into a symbol of the local spirit —quality products, social and environmental awareness, and a touch of irreverence. The region is also one of the great epicenters of craft beer in the United States, with some of the most sought-after IPAs in the country, and a strong farm-to-table movement that makes the most of Vermont's cheeses, meats and maple syrup.
Academic, green, progressive and turned toward the lake and the mountains, Burlington combines the cultural life of a city with immediate access to nature: Lake Champlain, the Green Mountains, Stowe and the lake islands are all close at hand. That mix —a small city with a big soul— is what makes it so well loved and keeps it the great gateway to northern Vermont.