Downtown Providence, RI is pretty interesting, actually.
You can see, via the merchants, the influence of the RI School of Design (aka RISD: Riz-Dee; also considered the world's greatest design school; and the resulting heavy concentration of artists) + the influence of Johnson & Wales (a global culinary institute; headquartered in Providence) + the strong ethnic influence: RI has always been an immigrant state; every wave hit here hard ... the latest are Latin-American and African and the occasional Ukrainian. Ethnic dining options abound, as a result.
Brown is on the top of a very steep hill. Your elders will be panting. Compulsive pickle-ball players will not.
There is a gentler way, though. Let me be your guide? I know the softer route.
And though I'm no academic, I'm probably slightly better than a new-ish cab driver (with all due respect). Maybe I can fill in some blanks. Since I've lived in RI since 1965. Since I read local history for pleasure. Since I've worked with all sorts of charities hereabouts ... including the state's foremost Indigenous-led museum (see case brochure attached; I wrote it ... and it only took a year and half to beat my white-man's preconceptions out of it).
I promise to stick to the truth, as I know it.
We'll take in downtown murals (big here). Wander across the new pedestrian bridge (named for a one-time client; lands you at Plant City, BTW). Up super-funky Wickenden Street; along the waterfront a bit maybe. Then into the Brown area, which is historic, vibrant, architectural, thought-provoking (some of the Brown family's wealth was built on the slave trade, which was legal at the time; it's gets complicated, since another Brown brother was a devote Quaker abolitionist). THEN downhill (the right direction for those who pant) through RISD.
Oh, yeah: America's industrial revolution started on these very rivers, the ones you'll be crossing. What are now pricey lofts and condominiums upstream were once factories making STUFF. A blatant, infamous act of industrial espionage got the whole thing rolling.