Norwich Audioguides

Norwich in eastern Connecticut was once called the Rose of New England, a nickname that reflected its early colonial prosperity as a trading hub where the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers meet to form the Thames. Founded in 1659, the city sits on a series of hills that drop to a harbor still active with commercial traffic. The old town green and the historic district around Washington Street preserve some of the most intact colonial and Federal-period architecture in the Connecticut River valley region.

The city's most complicated native son is Benedict Arnold, born here in 1741, who began his military career as a patriot hero at Ticonderoga and Quebec before his 1780 defection became the defining act of American treachery.

Norwich also shares deep history with the Mohegan tribe, whose ancestral territory covered this region. The Mohegan sachem Uncas, who allied with English colonists in the Pequot War of 1637, is buried at the Royal Mohegan Burial Ground on Washington Street, a quiet hillside grave for a figure who shaped the power dynamics of early New England.