Boston prides itself on being old. “Boston Common, America’s Oldest Park, Founded in 1634,” reads a large black plaque upon your arrival. The Union Oyster House calls itself the oldest continuously operating restaurant in America, having served the likes of John F. Kennedy and Daniel Webster since 1826. Thus, finding quality antiques in this town doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. What will surprise you is the wealth of intriguing contemporary art on display in the city’s galleries. Prestigious art schools like the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and nearby Rhode Island School of Design churn out promising artists who supply a prodigious amount of wares.

Fortunately, most of these pieces are not in some warehouse district on the fringes of town, but in the thriving center of the city. Both Charles Street (antiques) and Newbury Street (art) stem from the Public Garden, where in June hundreds of tulips greet you like spectators to a marathon.

A Room With A Vieux Antiques, No. 20, is your first stop on Charles Street, which runs along the base of Beacon Hill, staring up at historic townhouses. Every month, owner Jeff Diamond makes a foray to France to scour the countryside for Art Deco light fixtures ($2,850–$5,000), armoires ($3,800–$5,800) and his specialty: intricately detailed headboards. Diamond will retrofit a European double into a queen bed and attach these stylish headboards for prices that start at $2,800.

A half-block off Charles Street, at 73 Chestnut Street, the sky-blue facade of Stephen Score Antiques accentuates the 18th-century paneling and glass. Inside, Score’s forte is Americana, with a special emphasis on color. Two rooms are chock-full of 19th-century quilts, priced anywhere from $8,500 to $75,000, an assortment of horse-shaped weathervanes, also starting at $2,500, and American Impressionist works by the likes of Theodore Wendelm, whose 1895 pastel on paper “Sunset Sail” is tagged at $21,000, and Aldro Hibbard, whose oil on canvas “Light on a Marsh” is $15,000.

Back on Charles Street, Alberts-Langdon Inc. has been housed at No. 126 for 44 years. Its specialty is Asian art, covering a wide spectrum of time periods, countries and prices. Thirteenth-century Qingbai seal paste boxes start at an affordable $200, while a finely carved eighth-century terra-cotta horse from China, in pristine condition, will set you back $85,000. The small storefront also features Japanese woodblock prints, in the $100 neighborhood, to blue-and-white 15th-century Vietnamese ceramics priced from $15,000 to $30,000.

Across the street at No. 119 is one of the more unusual antiques collections in the city—the Boston Antique Cooperative No. 1. Ten dealers have rented space to display their diverse offerings. Under glass are 19th-century photographs priced from $10 to several hundred dollars, rotary telephones from the 1930s to ’50s for $200 to $1,000, and more than 200 antique corkscrews priced from $40 to $2,000. One 19th-century corkscrew has a small brush attached, which was used to dust off bottles of wine before serving.

Stretching from the Public Garden to Massachusetts Avenue, the eight blocks of Newbury Street are home to many of Boston’s best boutiques, spas, restaurants and art galleries. Step off the elevator into Barbara Krakow’s fifth-floor gallery at No. 10, and you might be greeted by a small George Segal sculpture selling for $25,000 or the latest Alex Katz large-scale painting priced at a cool $100,000. That’s not surprising considering Krakow is the Leo Castelli of the Boston art scene, having owned a gallery on Newbury Street since 1964 and representing some of the biggest names in contemporary art. Yet Krakow still exhibits works by many younger artists who work or studied in Boston. MFA graduate Kate Shepherd uses striking color as a backdrop in her enamel paintings for her minimalist architectural sketches. Prices start at $2,400.