Chestnut Hill Reservoir has a popular 1.5-mile circular path with pleasant vistas of Back Bay skyscrapers. The Reservation was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted’s son and constructed in the late 1860s to give Boston clean drinking water and a rural park.

Still largely intact, the waterworks with its three gatehouses at the water’s edge and three majestic pump houses on Beacon Street is considered a masterpiece of 19th-century engineering and landscape design. Both Cochituate and Sudbury Aqueducts are still connected to the Reservoir, but the system has been disabled.

Today the paths around the Reservoir and through the woods are open for public use, where local birders have found good vantage points for the somewhat frequent viewing of rarities in migration. The DCR recreation center offers seasonal swimming and ice skating.

The AllTrails website has a description and map of a hike at Chestnut Hill Reservoir.