Little Women: Concord, Orchard House and Beyond

Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women here in 1868, and she set the novel in the house too. The Alcott daughters lived at Orchard House from 1858 to 1877, and the March family's "new neighborhood" is loosely based on Concord, Massachusetts. Today it is a museum open for guided tours: roughly 75% of the furnishings belonged to the Alcott family, so the rooms look much as they did when the sisters lived there. It is the best place to picture Marmee, Jo and her sisters at home.

Para el visitante: Orchard House is a museum open for guided tours; check times before you go.

This was the Alcott family's earlier Concord home, then called Hillside. Louisa and her sisters lived many of the scenes that later appeared in Little Women here, including their amateur plays. The book opens the same way: Jo is busy with "the play for Christmas night". Louisa got her first room of her own here in 1846, when the family added a bedroom for her. Nathaniel Hawthorne later renamed the house The Wayside, and since 1965 it has been part of Minute Man National Historical Park.

Para el visitante: Open as part of Minute Man National Historical Park, next to Orchard House.

A telegram reaches the March family: "Your husband is very ill. Come at once." Marmee leaves to nurse Mr. March in Washington, DC. Alcott knew this world from experience: soon after turning thirty in 1862 she applied to the U.S. Sanitary Commission and was assigned to the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, Washington. The novel never names the hospital's district, so this stop is only a marker for the city.

Precisión del lugar: The novel only says a Washington hospital; the pin marks Georgetown, where Alcott herself nursed in 1862.

Later the story moves to Europe. At three in the afternoon "all the fashionable world at Nice" strolls the Promenade des Anglais, a wide walk bordered with palms, flowers and tropical shrubs, with the sea on one side. Many nations are represented and many languages spoken. The walkway was funded by English visitors, among them the Reverend Lewis Way, and locals now call it simply the Promenade or La Prom.

Precisión del lugar: The book names the Promenade but no spot on it; the pin marks a central point of the long seafront walk.

Para el visitante: The Promenade runs along the whole seafront; the pin marks a central point.

On Lake Geneva, Amy and Laurie glide past Chillon, talking of Bonnivard, with pretty Vevay in the valley and Lausanne on the hill. By the end of the book Amy and Laurie marry before leaving Europe. The castle stands on a rock in the lake between Montreux and Villeneuve, and Lord Byron wrote his poem The Prisoner of Chillon about it in 1816. Today it is billed as Switzerland's most visited historic monument.

Para el visitante: Open to visitors; the castle is on the lakeshore between Montreux and Villeneuve.