Things to Do in Philadelphia: A Complete Guide

Philadelphia sits where the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers meet, a city of roughly 1.6 million that served as the nation's capital before Washington, D.C. existed and still carries that founding-era weight in its street grid — William Penn's original 1682 plan made it the first American city laid out on a rectilinear pattern, and you can still walk those same numbered streets from river to river. The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall draw the obvious first visit, but the real texture of the city lives in its neighborhoods: South Philly, where the Italian Market on Ninth Street has operated continuously since 1906 and where the cheesesteak rivalry between Pat's and Geno's plays out at a single intersection; Fishtown, a former shad-fishing village turned into one of the East Coast's densest concentrations of breweries and live music rooms; and Rittenhouse Square, the kind of old-money park where office workers eat lunch on benches shaded by century-old trees while tourists photograph the brownstones lining the perimeter. Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-largest in the United States, but it moves at a pace closer to a mid-sized town — you can walk from Chinatown to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in about forty minutes, passing through distinct shifts in architecture and atmosphere every few blocks. The food scene runs deeper than the cheesesteak reputation suggests: roast pork sandwiches from DiNic's at Reading Terminal Market, soft pretzels sold from carts on nearly every Center City corner, and a growing Southeast Asian corridor along Washington Avenue that rivals any in the country. The city's public art collection is the largest in any American city, most of it outdoors and free, scattered through neighborhoods where row houses with marble stoops line streets narrow enough that neighbors can talk across them without raising their voices.