Current tours:
Full Story @ the Walters: An Independent Museum Tour Centering Black History & Histories of Empire
Premiered in February 2025; returning January & February 2026
It’s time for something a little different: an art museum tour unlike any other! There’s more to the incomparable treasures of the Walters Art Museum than meets the eye. On this tour, we’ll take a tightly focused walk through the galleries, learning stories about Black history told through art, and talking through the connections between colonialism and museum curation. If you’ve ever walked out of an art museum with big questions, or felt unsure if you’re welcome there, this tour was developed with you in mind. Come join us on a cozy and thought-provoking indoor tour, this winter!
Accessibility: This tour includes stops in museum galleries with benches for sitting. For accessibility information at the Walters, please see this page of their website. If you need additional accommodations, please let us know in advance. Approx. 1 hour 15 minutes long.
Black Reconstruction in Lower Charles Village
Running in late November and December 2025
‘Tis the season for a gentle daytime walk with a hot drink in hand, through the Charles North, Old Goucher, and Barclay neighborhoods. This tour features histories of Black Baltimorean resistance to white supremacist institutions & political machinations, between approximately 1865 & 1920. Come join us for stories about HBCUs, Black churches, Black lawyers, political organizing, and labor organizing—and to see a vision of what Baltimore looked like before the “Black Butterfly” and the “white L” took their shape. This tour is intended to inspire and ground us while we enjoy the beautiful Romanesque and rowhouse architecture of this colorful part of town.
Accessibility: We will be walking on city sidewalks, and the tour route can be modified slightly to accommodate mobility aids. The tour will cover approximately 1.3 miles. Approx. 1.5 hours long.
Frederick Douglass’ Fell’s Point*: Stories of Liberation in Black Maritime Baltimore
Premiered December 2024; now postponed until March 2026
Come join us on a Frederick Douglass tour like no other! The Fells Point Historic District was home to Douglass as a young man, where he learned to caulk the hulls of sailing ships and to dream of liberation—but his story was only one part of a larger, remarkable Black maritime history. On this tour, we will walk the eye-catching waterfront streets of Fells Point and hear about the lives and freedom struggles of the men and women of Frederick Douglass’ neighborhood, with your local historian and former “Jack Tar” (sailor) guide. If you’ve ever wanted to learn what privateers or caulkers actually did, or if an evening full of liberation stories sounds great right now, this is the tour for you.
Accessibility: We will be walking on uneven paving stones in addition to city sidewalks, partially in darkness, and the tour will cover approximately 1.4 miles. 1.5 hours long.
*Apostrophes are accurate to the historical period (and to Frederick Douglass’ own usage)
Revolution in Baltimore Town: The Tour
Premiered April 19, 2025
Baltimore says NO KINGS! Get ready for an imaginative tour of downtown & the inner harbor, full of wild stories from the American Revolution and beyond. Extensively researched and completely unique, this tour comes just in time for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War. Learn about the logistics of revolution in a maritime boomtown, the revolutionary lives of women and Black Baltimoreans, and ways that the French and Haitian Revolutions changed our city. This tour was developed for visitors and long-time residents alike, so come join us on a memorable walk through the original heart of Baltimore!
Accessibility: We will be walking on city sidewalks, and the tour route can be modified slightly to accommodate mobility aids. The tour route is approx. 1.3 miles, and there are occasional places to sit down along the route. 1 hour 45 minutes long.
This tour is now also available for private tours as a 2-hour version with additional content focused on Black Baltimore history in the Revolutionary War.
This tour is entirely independent and unaffiliated with any other institution in Baltimore or elsewhere. Derivative works are not licensed or authorized by Full Story Baltimore, other than merchandise with the “Baltimore says No Kings!” design by K. Hambrick sold only in our merch store or distributed by the Full Story Baltimore tour guide.
Want to come on this tour? Send an email to ek@fullstorybaltimore.tours to ask about scheduling a public tour for a day & time that works for you! (For a private tour, click here.)
Baltimore’s Confederate Shadows: Wyman Park & Charles Village
Premiered August 2025
Come join us on this new nighttime walking tour for real-life gothic horror stories and conversations about historical reckoning. We’ll shine a light on some of the secessionist, slave-trading, and Confederate military skeletons lurking in the closets of wealthy institutions in this part of town. Winding through Charles Village and Wyman Park, this second installment of the “Baltimore’s Confederate Shadows” tour series features brand-new research, more macabre narratives, and the messy truth about even more villains from Baltimore’s past.
Accessibility: We will be walking on city sidewalks, in darkness, and the tour will cover approximately 1.4 miles. The route can be modified slightly for wheelchair access. 1.5 hours long.
Tour developed in collaboration with Hopkins Retrospective, the public history initiative within Johns Hopkins University Libraries.
Want to come on this tour? Send an email to ek@fullstorybaltimore.tours to ask about scheduling a public tour for a day & time that works for you! (For a private tour, click here.)
Looking for information about the Confederate monument on Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus? Click this link. To get the password to access this page, come on the current Baltimore’s Confederate Shadows tour and you’ll receive an email with it after the tour, or send an email to Emma Katherine at ek@fullstorybaltimore.tours.
Upcoming tours:
Retired tours:
Baltimore’s Confederate Shadows: Mount Vernon to Midtown
Ran November 2024 through April 2025
Available by special request for private group tours.
Encounter a different side of Baltimore, as we take a peek at the seditious skeletons in our city’s closets. During the lead-up to the US Civil War and its long aftermath, many of Baltimore’s elite citizens favored secession, had ties to the Confederacy, or promoted the Lost Cause movement. Some of our most beloved local institutions were founded by those same people. We will learn about some of Baltimore’s wildest Confederate history, and the hopeful ways our city has grown and changed since then, on this walking tour through the stunning Mount Vernon and Midtown neighborhoods.
Accessibility: We will be walking on uneven brick city sidewalks, in darkness, and the tour will cover approximately 1.5 miles. 1 hour 45 minutes long.
This tour is now also available for private tours as a 1-hour condensed version with a shorter walking route, focusing on Mount Vernon Place.
The British Empire in Baltimore: A Walking Tour
Ran November 2023 through November 2024 (+ June 2025)
Available by special request for private group tours.
As a colonial city, a port city, and a cultural powerhouse, Baltimore has had many connections to the 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century British Empire. On this walking tour through the historic downtown and lovely Mount Vernon neighborhood, we will stretch our legs and hear fascinating stories along the way. Come join us to learn about some of the complicated and messier parts of Baltimore’s history, covering topics like local Indigenous history, plantation slavery, the Plantations of Ireland, privateering, the opium trade, and Victorian occultism.
Accessibility: We will be walking on uneven brick city sidewalks, partially in darkness, and the tour will cover approximately 1.5 miles. 1 hour 45 minutes long.
Victorian-era Seton Hill: A Walking Tour
Ran October 2024 to October 2025
Available by special request for private group tours.
Baltimore’s Seton Hill neighborhood, once known as the city’s French Quarter, has a rich nineteenth-century history. On this walking tour through the beautiful old streets of Seton Hill, we will explore the surviving traces and look for the ghosts of the Victorian city. Come step off the beaten path with historian Emma Katherine Bilski and hear stories of this neighborhood, including Baltimore’s Black Catholic history, student “pranks and misdemeanors,” the real history of Baltimore’s asylums, and the human history of America’s oldest Gothic Revival masterpiece.
Accessibility: We will be walking over some uneven grassy terrain and paving stones in addition to city sidewalks, and the tour will cover approximately 1.3 miles. 1.5 hours long.
