United States · Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
The city where both the Declaration and the Constitution were argued out, wrapped in a walkable rowhouse town with world-class art and the best value on the Northeast Corridor.
Philadelphia is where the United States was argued into existence, and Independence Hall, where it happened, still stands in a few blocks of red brick at the edge of downtown. It is a big American city that behaves like a smaller one: laid out on a seventeenth-century Quaker plan of numbered streets and five green squares, flat and walkable end to end, and markedly cheaper and less self-conscious than the corridor cities on either side of it. Underneath the founding story sits a rowhouse town with a serious eating culture, more painted walls than anywhere else in the country, and a blunt local character it is entirely happy about.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-4
Why you'll love Philadelphia
Founding history the actual rooms, not reconstructions, with the assembly hall, the bell, the first bank and the oldest inhabited street inside a few walkable blocks
Human scale a flat, legible grid of numbered streets and green squares you can cross on foot in half an hour, which no other big city on this coast can offer
Eating a counter-food capital of sandwiches, markets and street stalls that also runs one of the most inventive independent restaurant scenes in the country
Value the affordable city on the corridor, where the hotel bill, the meal and the museum all cost noticeably less than the same night two hours north or south
Best time to visit
Apr-May, Oct-Nov
13-24° days
39.953° N, 75.163° W
UTC-4 · America/New York
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Weather & when to go to Philadelphia
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-May, Oct-Nov
Watch for Jun-Nov cyclones & hurricanes risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Philadelphia
January and February are the ones to skip: raw, grey and windy, with the wind funnelling straight down the numbered streets, not enough snow to be pretty, and the outdoor half of a very outdoor city shut down. July and August swing the other way into heavy Mid-Atlantic humidity and haze, which is manageable if you plan the middle of the day indoors rather than walking it.
Top things to do in Philadelphia
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Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell - the founding rooms
history 👍 PopularThe assembly room of the old Pennsylvania State House is where the Declaration was adopted in 1776 and the Constitution drafted eleven years later, and rangers walk you into it in small timed groups. The cracked bell sits in a glass pavilion across the lawn, and Congress Hall, the First Bank and the Carpenters' Hall of the First Continental Congress are all within the same national park blocks. Timed entry applies to the hall in the busy months, so sort that before you turn up.
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Reading Terminal Market - the whole city eating under one train shed
food 👍 PopularTrading since 1893 under the old Reading Railroad shed: roast pork sandwiches with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone, Pennsylvania Dutch stands run by Amish and Mennonite families down from Lancaster County who keep their own days, oyster counters, cheesesteak griddles, soft pretzels and a doughnut queue that forms early. Go hungry, go before noon, and expect to eat standing at a counter.
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Philadelphia Museum of Art - the Rocky steps and the collection above them
culture arts 👍 PopularThe long flight up to the honey-coloured Greek revival temple on the hill is the most-run staircase in America thanks to one 1976 training montage, with a bronze Rocky at the bottom right and a permanent line for photographs at the top. Most people forget to go in: it is a genuinely encyclopaedic museum, with an unmatched Duchamp holding, a reassembled Japanese teahouse and Indian temple hall, and a deep run of Cezanne, Eakins and American painting.
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Barnes Foundation - Renoirs and Cezannes hung Barnes's way
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedAlbert Barnes assembled one of the great private collections of Post-Impressionist and early modern painting, then hung it as dense symmetrical ensembles that mix canvases with wrought ironwork, furniture and African sculpture, with no labels on the walls to tell you what you are looking at. The whole arrangement was lifted from its suburban home to the Parkway in 2012 and rebuilt room for room, a move that remains contested and is worth knowing as you walk through it.
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Eastern State Penitentiary - the ruined radial prison
history ⭐ Highly recommendedThe world's first true penitentiary opened in 1829 as a Quaker experiment in solitary reform, a wheel of vaulted cellblocks behind castle walls, and it has been stabilised as a ruin rather than restored: peeling plaster, collapsed roofs, saplings in the exercise yards. The audio tour is narrated by Steve Buscemi, Al Capone's cell is dressed as it was reportedly kept, and the site runs an unusually blunt exhibit on American mass incarceration alongside the history.
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Elfreth's Alley - the oldest continuously inhabited street in the country
historyA cobbled lane of thirty-odd brick houses off Second Street, built for tradespeople in the 1700s and lived in without a break ever since, complete with bootscrapers, painted shutters and a busybody mirror angled from each doorframe. Two of the houses run as a small museum; the rest are people's homes, so keep your voice down and stay off the steps.
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Mural Arts Philadelphia - the painted walls, block after block
culture artsWhat started as an anti-graffiti programme in the 1980s has left thousands of murals across the city, from gable-end portraits three storeys high to whole facades in tile and mirror, making this the most heavily painted city in the country. Guided walks and a self-guided run along the Market Street corridor and down into South Philadelphia show why locals treat the walls as public memory rather than decoration.
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Philadelphia's Magic Gardens - Isaiah Zagar's mosaic labyrinth
culture artsHalf indoor gallery, half walk-through outdoor maze on South Street, tiled from floor to sky in mirror shards, bicycle wheels, bottle bottoms and hand-drawn faces by a mosaicist who has been covering the surrounding blocks for decades. Small and dense, best in daylight when the mirror work catches, and worth a wander afterwards to find the dozens of his other walls nearby.
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Ninth Street Italian Market - awnings, barrel fires and the South Philly kitchen
foodThe country's oldest continuously operating outdoor market runs for blocks under corrugated awnings, butchers and cheese shops spilling produce crates onto the pavement and fires burning in oil drums on cold mornings. Italian at the root and now equally Mexican and Vietnamese, it is the rough, working counterpart to the covered market uptown, and the surrounding streets hold the sandwich shops locals actually argue about.
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South Philly cheesesteaks - the rivals, and the ones locals rate
foodThe two neon-lit shops facing each other across a Passyunk Avenue intersection invented the tourist version and are worth seeing once, even though the sandwich is usually better elsewhere: John's Roast Pork down by the docks, Dalessandro's up in Roxborough and a dozen anonymous corner takeaways make a stronger case. Order it the local way, cheese named first, onions or not, and accept that most Philadelphians would rather send you for roast pork.
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Mutter Museum - medicine before anaesthetic
culture artsThe College of Physicians keeps its nineteenth-century teaching collection in mahogany and glass: skulls, preserved specimens, antique surgical kits, the conjoined liver of Chang and Eng Bunker, and a soap-like body recovered from a Philadelphia grave. Genuinely unsettling in places, fascinating throughout, and not one for young children.
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Benjamin Franklin Parkway - the museum mile and the Rodin garden
culture artsA boulevard modelled on the Champs-Elysees was cut diagonally through the grid in the 1910s, hung with the flags of the world and lined with the city's big institutions between City Hall and the art museum. Partway along, the Rodin Museum holds the largest collection of his work outside Paris in a small beaux-arts pavilion and walled garden, with a cast of The Thinker at the gate.
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City Hall - the William Penn tower and the view from his feet
historyThe largest masonry building in the country and briefly the tallest habitable building in the world, a Second Empire pile of granite and marble planted squarely in the middle of the grid with a bronze Penn on top. A lift runs up inside the tower to a small observation deck just under his feet, four ways across the city; a gentlemen's agreement kept every other building below the brim of his hat until 1987.
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Franklin Institute - the walk-through heart
culture artsA hands-on science museum built around the giant two-storey model of a human heart that generations of local schoolchildren have climbed through, with a planetarium, a full-size locomotive you can board, and rotating touring exhibitions. Paired with the natural history museum next door it absorbs a rainy day with children without effort.
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Penn Museum - Egypt, Mesopotamia and the sphinx
historyThe University of Pennsylvania's archaeology museum shows the material its own expeditions dug up: a colossal red granite sphinx of Ramesses II, the royal tombs of Ur, Maya stelae and one of the better Chinese galleries in the country, in a rambling brick and tile building with a courtyard garden in University City. Quieter than the Parkway museums and much less crowded.
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Wissahickon Valley Park - Forbidden Drive inside the city limits
nature wildlifeFairmount Park is one of the largest urban park systems in the country, and the best of it is the Wissahickon gorge in the northwest: a wooded creek valley with a wide unpaved carriage road running for miles under hemlocks, closed to cars, crossed by covered bridge and old stone arches. A statue of the Lenape leader Tedyuscung looks out from a rock ledge above the water halfway along.
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Schuylkill Banks and Boathouse Row - the river path at dusk
scenicA boardwalk and trail run along the river from Center City out past the art museum, giving the flattest run or ride in the city and the classic view of Boathouse Row: a line of Victorian rowing clubhouses picked out at night in strings of lights, with eights on the water most mornings of the year.
Best areas to stay in Philadelphia
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Rittenhouse Square
First-time visitors $$$Leafy square, brownstones, best hotel choice
Explore hotels in Rittenhouse Square →
Old City & Society Hill
History on foot $$Cobbles, brick and the founding sites
Explore hotels in Old City & Society Hill →
Washington Square West
Eating & nightlife $$Dense restaurant blocks and the Gayborhood
Explore hotels in Washington Square West →
Fishtown & Northern Liberties
Music & rowhouses $$Post-industrial riverside, music and beer
Explore hotels in Fishtown & Northern Liberties →
University City
Campus & the station $$Campus quads beside the main station
Explore hotels in University City →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Philadelphia
Getting to & around Philadelphia
Getting there
Fly into PHL, then about 25 minutes on the Airport Line regional rail straight into the three Center City stations
Flight
Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
PHL sits about 11 km southwest of Center City down the Delaware. The SEPTA Airport Line runs from platforms at every terminal into University City, 30th Street, Suburban and Jefferson stations in roughly 20 to 25 minutes, about every half hour through the day, which puts you within walking distance of most Center City hotels. Taxis and rideshare take 20 to 30 minutes up Interstate 95 outside peak, longer in it. The airport is also a short hop from the Amtrak network at 30th Street if you are connecting onward.
Train
30th Street Station
The Northeast Corridor's busiest intermediate stop: roughly 1 hr 15 min to 1.5 hr from New York, about 2 hr from Washington, and 5 hr or so from Boston, in a monumental 1930s hall that is worth arriving into. Keystone Service trains also run west to Lancaster, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh
Train
Trenton
The slow way in from New York: NJ Transit down to Trenton, then SEPTA regional rail into Center City. Two changes and about twice the journey time, for a fraction of the corridor fare
Coach
30th Street & Chinatown
Intercity buses from New York, Washington and Baltimore use terminals and curbside stops around 30th Street Station and the edge of Chinatown; the New York run is frequent, cheap and slow enough that the train usually wins
Drive
Interstate 95 runs along the Delaware, Interstate 76 in beside the Schuylkill and the Pennsylvania Turnpike crosses the top of the metro. The Schuylkill Expressway jams with grim reliability, garage parking in Center City is expensive, and the grid works better on foot, so most visitors are better off without a car
Getting around
Walking
The best way to see the city: Center City is flat, numbered one way and tree-named the other, and the historic district to the art museum is an hour on foot with everything in between
Free
Subway
Two lines cross under City Hall: the Market-Frankford Line, universally called the El, runs west to east through the middle of everything to Fishtown and beyond, and the Broad Street Line runs north to south to the stadiums
TBC
Trolley
Subway-surface trolley lines burrow under Center City then surface into West Philadelphia, which is how you reach the university museums and the residential blocks past them
TBC
Regional Rail
Thirteen commuter lines thread through all three Center City stations rather than terminating at them, reaching the airport, Valley Forge's edge, the Main Line suburbs and Trenton
TBC
Bus
Fills in the crosstown journeys the two subway lines miss, including the run out along the Parkway to the museums
TBC
Bike share
Indego docking stations cover Center City and the near neighbourhoods, and the riverside trails are flat and separated; the rowhouse side streets are narrow and drivers are assertive
TBC
Ferry
A seasonal passenger boat crosses the Delaware to the Camden waterfront on the New Jersey side, which is the pleasant way to reach the aquarium and the concert pier there
TBC
Taxi & rideshare
Easy to summon anywhere in the centre, and the sensible option late at night or out to a restaurant in South Philadelphia
TBC
Day trips from Philadelphia
Valley Forge National Historical Park
Half dayRevolutionary winter camp
Washington's army spent the winter of 1777-78 on this rolling ground while the British held the city, and the encampment is now a wide park of reconstructed log huts, artillery redoubts, the stone house Washington used as headquarters and an arched memorial chapel. There is a road loop you can drive, cycle or walk, and the story is about supply, typhus and endurance rather than any battle.
Getting there
car | train | bus
About 45 min by car northwest, or regional rail to Norristown and a short local connection
Brandywine Valley
Full dayGardens and Wyeth country
Longwood Gardens, a du Pont estate turned botanical showpiece, runs vast conservatories, fountain gardens and a wildflower meadow and takes most of a day on its own. Nearby, the Brandywine River Museum hangs three generations of Wyeths in a converted grist mill above the creek, Winterthur holds an enormous American decorative arts collection in another du Pont house, and the 1777 battlefield sits between them.
Getting there
car | tour
About 1 hr by car southwest into Chester County and northern Delaware
Lancaster County
Full dayPennsylvania Dutch country
Rolling farm country where Amish and Old Order Mennonite families still work the fields with horses and drive buggies along the shoulder of the road, with covered bridges, roadside farm stands, quilt shops and enormous family-style dining rooms. The version worth having means slowing right down and buying something at the end of a farm lane, rather than the frankly touristy strip along the main highway.
Getting there
car | train
About 1.5 hr by car, or roughly 70 min on a Keystone train to Lancaster
New Hope and Bucks County
Full dayRiver towns and crossings
A canalside arts town of galleries, bookshops and a steam tourist railway faces Lambertville across the river in New Jersey, joined by a footbridge you can walk between the two states. Downstream, Washington Crossing marks the point where the Continental Army crossed the ice on Christmas night in 1776, and the back roads through Bucks County run past stone farmhouses and covered bridges.
Getting there
car
About 1 hr by car up the Delaware
Atlantic City and the Jersey Shore
Full dayBoardwalk and beaches
The original boardwalk, laid in 1870 and the source of the Monopoly street names, fronts a casino strip that has seen better decades but still delivers a proper wide Atlantic beach and saltwater taffy. Better beach days sit further down the coast: Ocean City for families, Wildwood for neon and enormous sand, and Cape May at the tip for painted Victorian guesthouses and serious birdwatching.
Getting there
car | train | bus
About 1 hr by car, or roughly 1.5 hr on the Atlantic City Line from 30th Street Station
New York City
Full dayCorridor day return
Close enough that Philadelphians treat it as a day out: the corridor trains put you in midtown in not much over an hour, which makes a museum, a walk and a meal a workable single day even if it is a thin substitute for staying. The cheap route changes at Trenton and takes about twice as long.
Getting there
train | bus
Roughly 1 hr 15 min to 1.5 hr by Northeast Corridor train from 30th Street Station
A little history of Philadelphia
The Lenape lived along the Delaware and Schuylkill long before William Penn arrived in 1682 to lay out a capital for the Quaker colony granted to settle his father's debt. He planned it as a greene country towne on a grid of numbered streets with five public squares, and he set religious tolerance in the founding charter, which drew Quakers, German Pietists, Presbyterians and Jews in numbers no other colonial city matched. By the 1770s it was the largest and richest city in British America, which is precisely why the Continental Congress met here, why the Declaration was adopted in the state house on Chestnut Street, and why the Constitution was hammered out in the same room over one closed-window summer eleven years later.
It served as the national capital through the 1790s while Washington was built, then lost that and, to New York, its financial primacy, and reinvented itself as the workshop of the world: locomotives, textiles, ships, refineries and mile after mile of cheap brick rowhouses built for the people who worked in them. Waves of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish, Puerto Rican and Southern Black migration filled those streets, and the city holds one of the oldest free Black communities in the country. The twentieth century brought hard industrial decline, a population drop of hundreds of thousands, and in 1985 the police bombing of a rowhouse that burned down a West Philadelphia block, a scar the city has never fully addressed. Medicine, universities and a genuine downtown revival since the 1990s have brought people back, without much sanding down the city's edge.
William Penn lays out Philadelphia between two rivers as capital of his Quaker colony, on Lenape land
A teenage Benjamin Franklin arrives from Boston and spends the rest of his life remaking the city's institutions
The First Continental Congress meets at Carpenters' Hall
The Declaration of Independence is adopted in the Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall
The United States Constitution is drafted in the same room over a summer of shuttered windows
Philadelphia becomes the national capital for a decade while Washington is built
Yellow fever kills roughly a tenth of the population in a single season and empties the government out of the city
Richard Allen's Bethel congregation is founded in a converted blacksmith's shop, the root of the African Methodist Episcopal church and still on the same ground
The Act of Consolidation absorbs the whole county, expanding the city many times over in a single stroke
The Centennial Exhibition in Fairmount Park is the first World's Fair held in the United States
Police drop a bomb on the MOVE rowhouse in West Philadelphia, killing eleven people and burning down more than sixty homes
One Liberty Place breaks the gentlemen's agreement that had kept every building below the brim of William Penn's hat
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FAQs about Philadelphia
▸ When is the best time to visit Philadelphia?
April and May, then October and November, are the clear windows: mild air, blossom on the squares in spring and colour right through the park in autumn, with the river paths and outdoor tables in use. Summer works but is heavy going, hot and humid and hazy through July and August, which pushes you indoors in the middle of the day. January and February are the ones to avoid, raw and grey and windy, with the outdoor half of the city closed down.
▸ How many days do you need in Philadelphia?
Two full days covers the founding sites, the market, one of the big Parkway museums and an evening eating in South Philadelphia or Fishtown. Three or four lets you slow down for the prison, the mosaics on South Street and a walk in the Wissahickon, or take one day out to Valley Forge or the Brandywine gardens without cutting anything short.
▸ Do I need a car in Philadelphia?
No, and you are better off without one. Center City is a flat, legible grid you can cross on foot in half an hour, the two subway lines and the trolleys cover the rest, and regional rail handles both the airport and most of the day trips. Parking is expensive, the riverside expressway jams reliably, and local drivers are not famous for patience. Hire a car only for Lancaster County or the Brandywine Valley.
▸ Is Philadelphia expensive?
It is the affordable big city on the Northeast Corridor, noticeably cheaper than New York, Washington or Boston for a hotel room and a meal of the same standard, which is a large part of why people come. The historic core costs little or nothing to walk, the squares and the enormous park system are free, and the food the city is proudest of is counter food eaten standing up.
▸ Is Philadelphia safe for visitors?
The visitor city, meaning Center City, the historic district, the Parkway, University City and Fishtown, is comfortable to walk by day and in the evening, and the founding sites sit inside a national park with its own rangers. Philadelphia does carry a high violent crime rate for an American city, but it is concentrated in specific North, West and Kensington blocks that visitors have no reason to be on, and the well-documented opioid crisis in Kensington is several miles from anywhere you would go. Normal big-city habits after dark, and keep your phone in your pocket on crowded platforms.
▸ Philadelphia or Washington DC?
Washington is grander and greener and lets you walk into almost every national museum without paying; Philadelphia is older, smaller and far more lived-in, with better eating and a rowhouse texture the monumental core of Washington does not have. If you want the founding story in the actual rooms where it happened, come here. They are two hours apart by train, so the honest answer is usually both.
▸ What should I eat in Philadelphia?
The cheesesteak is the obligation, but ask a local and most will send you for a roast pork sandwich instead, long-cooked pork with sharp provolone and bitter broccoli rabe on a seeded roll, and the better sandwich by a distance. Around it sit hoagies, soft pretzels handed over folded in paper, water ice in summer, scrapple at breakfast if you are game, and an independent restaurant scene through South Philadelphia, Fishtown and Center City that punches far above what the city charges.
▸ Is Philadelphia worth visiting in winter?
Only if you are here for indoor things, and the museums, the market and the historic buildings do carry a trip. December brings lights and a Christmas market to the squares, and New Year's Day brings the Mummers up Broad Street, a century-old procession of string bands and elaborate feathered costumes that exists nowhere else. Otherwise January and February are grey, raw and windy, and the walkable pleasure of the place mostly evaporates.
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