Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Attractions

Tours

• Philadelphia Phlash [1] The Philadelphia Phlash is a convenient trackless trolley ride between downtown hotels and 19 key Philadelphia locations, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Old City and Logan Square. Best of all, the Phlash costs just $1 each time you board and is free for children under 5 years old and senior citizens over 65.

• Big Bus Tours [2] See the city of Philadelphia from a London-style double-decker bus, complete with an open top! Commentary on all of Philadelphia's sights is offered. This tour will cost you a bit more though, at $27 for a 24-hour pass.

• Philadelphia Trolley Works [3] Take a scenic tour of Philadelphia in a Victorian-era trolley, hose and carriage, LandShark, or double-decker bus. Hosts offer commentary on all that you see throughout Philadelphia. Prices vary depending on length of tour and vehicle.

• Ride the Ducks [4] One of the most notorious tours in Philadelphia involves not colonial works, but ducks. Riding the ducks, complete with a quacker, is a great way to see Philadelphia by land before seeing the skyline and scenic historic Philadelphia from the waters of the Delaware. And you're sure to draw looks from all the locals with each quack, who generally view the ducks as a nuisance.

• Once Upon A Nation [5] See Philadelphia's historic district with colonial-themed tour guides and bystanders. Once Upon A Nation showcases the Philadelphia of the 18th Century and pays close attention to the city' revolutionary heritage. In 2006, Once Upon A Nation will reopen Franklin Square, one of Penn's original five squares, as a tribute to Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday. The square lies just across from the historic district and will feature the Liberty Carousel among other attractions.

• Philadelphia in the Movies Tour[6] Discover a little Philadelphia history that's not in the textbooks. Visit the locations where all the action took place in such films as Rocky, Trading Places, The Sixth Sense, Philadelphia, In Her Shoes, and many more. Learn what happened, what didn’t and what did but never made it to the screen. Tours run every Saturday 10 am-12:30pm Boarding time is 9:45am at Market & 6th St. Walk Ups Welcome! Purchase ticket at www.toursignup.com/movie Sponsored by PNC

• Constitutional Guided Walking Tour of Philadelphia [7] Philadelphia is one of America's most walkable cities, so what better way to see it than on foot? Get up close and personal with history on this 75-minute, 1.25 mile walking tour of the historic district. The tour showcases over 15 of Philadelphia's most popular tourist attractions including Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Benjamin Franklin's grave site, and the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote much of the Declaration of Independece! Frequent departures throughout the day at the Independence Visitors Center at 6th & Market Streets! You can purchase tickets in person, online or at the Box Office: 215-525-1776.

Public art

Much of Philadelphia's art requires not a dollar to see and not a building to enter. Philadelphia has the largest collection of public art in America, courtesy of the city's innovative Mural Arts Program [8], designed to stop graffiti and enliven the city's buildings.

Other public art of note includes the many glass mosaics found throughout the city; a sampling of this great public art can be seen on South Street east of Broad.

Finally, center city Philadelphia offers two public statue displays. The Clothespin is a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg that resembles a clothespin located just across from City Hall on West Market Street. LOVE Park, serving as a terminus between City Hall and the museum-laden Benjamin Franklin Parkway, features a famous LOVE statue that has come to represent the brotherly love that Philadelphia was founded on. The site once was the city's (and perhaps the nation's) most popular skating attraction until new legislation and remodeling efforts outlawed skating in the park.

Historic sites

• Eastern State Penitentiary [9] America's Most Historic Prison. It is also the site of an annual Bastille Day recreation.

• Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site [10] The former home of the famous American author of mystery and the macabre.

• Fairmount Water Works [11] Features information on local watersheds as well as interpretive art.

• Independence National Historic Park [12] Philadelphia's signature historic site features the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Constitution Hall (home of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution). It also features historic buildings from the city's revolutionary past, approximately 20 of which are open to the public.

Museums

• Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, (215) 763-8100, [13]. Open Tuesdays-Sundays 10AM-5PM, with hours extended to 8:45PM on Fridays. Famous on the outside for the steps seen in the film Rocky and famous on the inside for one of the world's largest collections of art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is home to many rotating collections as well as a standard selection of pieces always on display. In 2007 the PMA will have the only US showing of Renoir Landscapes, and in 2008 an exhibition of Frida Kahlo's work will be on display. In addition, the PMA is opening a new exhibition space in the Perelman Building on Pennsylvania Ave which will display sculpture, costumes, textiles, prints, photographs, and design. Admission is $14 for adults, $12 for seniors, and $10 for students with a valid school ID. There is a AAA discount of $1 for adults. Sundays at the museum are pay what you wish, and you have to pay something.

• Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, (215) 299-1000, [14]. Open 10AM until 4:30PM on weekdays, 10AM until 5PM on weekends and holidays. Not just a natural history museum, this institution also has an active research arm and library. Highlights of the museum include a 2-story dinosaur exhibit, a butterfly walk-through area, and a children's nature center with live animals. Past special exhibits have included exhibits on chocolate in the summer of 2004, and the Lewis and Clark National Bicentennial Exhibition starting in November 2004. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for children, seniors, military and students with valid ID. Show your AAA card for $1 off admission per person.

• The African-American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch St., (215) 574-0380, [15]. Open 10AM until 5PM Tuesday through Saturday. Built to preserve, intrepret, and exhibit achievements of African Americans. The museum charges an admission fee of $8 per adult and $6 per child, senior citizen or physically challenged person.

• Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia History, 15 S. 7th Street, (215) 685-4830, [16]. The museum is open between 1PM and 5PM Wednesday through Sunday. This museum, where history inspires the future, is located just around the corner from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, features a hands-on and comprehensive history of America's birthplace and founding city. Unique to the museum is a walkable map of the region on the floor of the museum. In minutes, you can walk between suburban Montgomery County and the heart of Philadelphia in center city! Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for seniors and children 13 - 17 years old, and free for children under 12 years of age. Open 5-8 p.m. on the first Friday of the month, free to the public.

• Independence Seaport Museum, Penn's Landing, (215) 925-5439, [17]. Open daily 10AM to 5PM. This museum has lots of interesting displays regarding the maritime history of Philadelphia, from colonial times through the days of slave-trading to the Industrial Revolution. Highlights include a mockup of a navigation room and a place where you can view woodworkers handcrafting rowboats. The museum has some great views of the Delaware River and the Ben Franklin Bridge. Admission $9, $6 children, $8 seniors and students.

• The Franklin Institute Science Museum, 222 N. 20th Street, (215) 448-1200, [18]. Open daily 9:30AM. to 5PM, closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve & Day, and New Year's Day. This museum attracts some of the top scientific exhibits in the world, including the Titanic Artifacts exhibit, an upcoming exhibit of the Egyptian Treasures found in King Tut's tomb, and of course the 300th birthday celebration of Ben Franklin himself, which will be in 2006. Be sure to walk through the giant-sized human heart, a favorite with kids. This museum is incredibly popular with as a field trip destination for local schools, so be advised that mornings and early afternoons on weekdays may be crowded with schoolchildren. Base admission $13.75 for adults, $11 for children 4-11 years old and senior citizens.

• The Mutter Museum, 19 S. 22nd Street, (215) 563-3737, [19]. Open 10AM to 5PM everyday except Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. Originally open only to medical students, this collection of medial oddities is quickly becoming one of the city's most popular attractions. Not for the faint of heart, this museum includes lots of items in formaldhyde, lots of skeletons, and one of the only men to ever decompose into soap. $12 General admission, $8 for children 6-18, senior citizens, and college students.

• The Please Touch Museum, 210 N. 21st Street, (215) 963-0667, [20]. Open 9AM to 4:30PM daily, closed on New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. A fantastic place to take young children. As the name says, everyone is encouraged to touch the exhibits. Admission $9.95.

• The National Museum of American Jewish History, 55 N. 5th Street, (215) 923-3811, [21].

• Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. If you're into rare books at all, take the free tour, offered at 11 a.m. Mon-Fri, of the Philadelphia Free Library's amazing rare book collection. Besides the Gutenberg Bible, highlights include medieval manuscripts, children's book illustrations, and the stuffed body of Dickens's pet raven Grip, the raven who inspired The Raven.

• Rosenbach Museum and Library, 2008 DeLancey, (215) 732-1600 [22]. Hourly tours (Tues-Fri, 11-4) take visitors through this fine old townhouse owned by a pair of rare-book dealers, which has grown into a museum and archive. The Maurice Sendak room, full of his sketches and pages, also contains Herman Melville's own bookcase, which holds the copy of Moby-Dick he inscribed to Hawthorne. A handsome double library on another floor holds Joyce's manuscript for Ulysses. On the top floor, poet Marianne Moore's Greenwich Village living room has been installed, to go along with the Rosenbach's trove of Moore papers.

• University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology [23] Located on South Street between 32nd and 33rd Streets, this museum houses an impressive collection of Egyptian and Greco-Roman artifacts.

Parks

• Fairmount Park [24] Technically, Fairmount Park covers all of the city parks in Philadelphia, but the name also refers more specifically to the large park on both sides of the Schuykill River northwest of Center City, which is the largest urban park in the United States.

• Clark Park [25] Located at 43rd & Chester, Clark Park is an outdoor music and arts festival area in West Philadelphia.

• LOVE Park (formally, JFK Plaza) is a square near City Hall, known for it's Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture (dating to the American Bicentennial) and for attracting skateboarders from around the world (despite a ban on skating in the park). Since 2002, this ban has been rigorously enforced (and the park renovated to discourage skateboarders). Free wireless access is now available in the park.

• Rittenhouse Square. One (southwest) of William Penn's original five squares of public, open space in the city, Rittenhouse Square sits among classic and classy Rittenhouse hotels and residences and attracts people from around the world. As part of the Wireless Philadelphia initiative, the park is now completely blanketed in Wireless internet access.

• Washington Square (southeast), Franklin Square (northeast), Logan Circle (northwest), and City Hall (center) make up the other four original squares created by William Penn. Four of the five squares (one now a circle) are somewhat symmetrically located at the four corners of an imaginary square surrounding the very center of Center City Philadelphia, now occupied by City Hall. The center of City Hall's Square is a large compass in the ground. There are four archways leading into it. Logan Circle is considered the gateway to Fairmount Park and the Art Museum area. Washington Square is near Independence Hall. Franklin Square is seen mainly from cars approaching the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden, NJ and rarely by pedestrians.