Portland burned four times, and the last one made the city you walk through. The Great Fire began on the Fourth of July 1866 and took much of the peninsula; what went up afterwards went up all at once, which is why the Old Port looks so unusually of a piece — brick and brownstone, block after block. The handful of buildings that survived are the exceptions that prove it: the Wadsworth-Longfellow House of 1785, the first brick house in town and the boyhood home of the poet born here in 1807; the Portland Observatory, a maritime signal tower of the same year and the last of its kind in the United States. The city's motto is Resurgam, I shall rise again, and there is a phoenix on its seal.
39 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The Victorian commercial city built at once after 1866 — brick, stone, and deliberately fire-resistant — running down to the working wharves.
The Wadsworth-Longfellow House of 1785, First Parish of 1825, and Victoria Mansion, finished just before the Civil War.
The 1807 signal tower that told merchants whose ship was standing in, and the two promenades laid out to look at the water.
A wooden maritime signal tower on Munjoy Hill, and the last one of its kind surviving in the United States.
The first brick house in Portland and the boyhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born here in 1807.
A brownstone villa finished just before the Civil War, and one of the very few structures on the peninsula to stand through 1866.
The spine of the Old Port, and the clearest place to see a whole commercial district built in one campaign.
Home of the mayor who drove the Maine Law of 1851, the first statewide prohibition in the United States.
Stone, and older than the fire — a rare survival from the city's early nineteenth century.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 39 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration — history, architecture, and what the fire left. 39 narration points across the full tour.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every significant point on the peninsula. The pre-fire survivors and the museums get deep dives; the squares, churches and promenades get focused stories.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~73 minutes total, but you walk at your own pace. 39 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.