In business since 1855 and claiming the title “America’s longest continuously operating hotel,” the Parker House offers a range of rooms, with most on the extremely compact end of the scale. The public spaces have a 19th-century old-world grandeur, and the hotel is right on the Freedom Trail. But its real claim to fame is being the acknowledged inventor of both the Boston cream pie and buttery Parker House dinner rolls. Both are available here and generate their own tourist traffic.