You’ll arrive at the Fairmont Battery Wharf hotel. No, not the Fairmont Copley Plaza. That’s one of the grand dame hotels, in the Back Bay neighborhood. The Back Bay  Newbury Street, the Public Garden, the walk to stately Beacon Hill  is great. But you’ve done that.

You’re staying at the cool, new Fairmont boutique hotel, perched beside the northern edge of the North End, Boston’s Little Italy. Yes, that part of the waterfront. The industrial wharves have been revitalized. And now that after decades of construction, with its large cost overruns and charges of fraud, the Big Dig is finally done, replacing that hulking, traffic-clogged, elevated Central Artery with an underground highway, the North End, along with the waterfront, is newly accessible. As the boat pulls into the dock, a smiling bellman approaches with a luggage cart. The driver called ahead. The Fairmont Battery Wharf insists on such niceties. And, the really amazing thing, you don’t have to be rich to get this special treatment, or to score a luxurious room with a water view. At this time of year, rates can start at less than $200.

You pay your $10 boat fare. You check in. Then you stroll the narrow, twisting streets of the North End, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, full of cafes and restaurants and boutiques, and newly vibrant in the post Big Dig era. No longer do you have to thread your way beneath the Central Artery, with traffic rumbling nerve-rackingly overhead, to get between the North End and downtown.

Now you can walk boldly across Hanover Street, through the public plaza and park  underneath it is the tunnel that replaced the old elevated highway  that is the new Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Or you can just stand on Hanover Street on either side  the North End, or over by Faneuil Hall, or the Haymarket  and enjoy the striking city views. The city that was divided more than half a century ago by the Central Artery has been knit back together.

Continuing around the North End, you can check out the sights along the red brick Freedom Trail: the 17th-century Paul Revere house; the Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung in the steeple for Revere’s ride. Just up the street from the Revere House, a plaque on the wall at No. 4 Garden Court identifies it as the former home of John F. Fitzgerald, Boston’s legendary former mayor known as Honey Fitz, and the birthplace of his daughter, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.