Hartford is Connecticut's capital city and America's insurance capital, too. The American insurance industry was born in Hartford in 1810, largely to protect important Connecticut River shipping interests. Today, the Greater Hartford area remains home to many of the nation's largest insurance companies.

As cities go, Hartford suffers a bit of an identity crisis, situated as it is about halfway between the larger, more urbane cities of New York and Boston. Its petite skyline is punctuated by the glittering, gold-domed State Capitol Building and the “blue onion” dome atop the Colt Building. By day, downtown Hartford is a bustling commercial center. At night and on weekends, when the business crowd flees to suburbia, the city can seem somewhat ghostly unless a concert or sporting event at the Hartford Civic Center has drawn folks downtown or a group is booked at the Connecticut Convention Center. It remains to be seen whether a flurry of new residential real-estate development can invigorate Hartford and alter its 9 to 5 character.

Nevertheless, the 370-year-old city and its surrounding communities retain the cultural and intellectual flair and the air of prosperity and abundance that spurred American literary icon Mark Twain to make Hartford his home in 1871. You may just find, as Twain wrote in 1868 following his first visit to the city, “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see this is the chief. … You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here.”