118 places
Great art, big science and the story of an industrial state
Photo: National Park Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Pennsylvania's two great cities each have museums worth a trip on their own. Philadelphia has the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the top of its famous steps, the Barnes Foundation's remarkable collection of Impressionist and early modern paintings, and the Franklin Institute for hands-on science. Pittsburgh has the Carnegie museums, with their dinosaurs, and a whole museum given over to Andy Warhol.
Elsewhere, the museums tell the story of a working state: steam locomotives at Steamtown and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, steel in Bethlehem, coal mines you can go down into near Scranton, oil at Titusville and lumber in the northern forests. Most make an easy half-day, and many smaller ones keep limited hours, so check before you go.
Our picks
Art museum · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County
Climb the famous Rocky Steps to a vast temple of art, with masterpieces from Van Gogh's Sunflowers to Duchamp, a medieval cloister and a Japanese teahouse inside.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Natural history museum · Pittsburgh, Allegheny County
Dinosaurs posed in lifelike scenes, among them Dippy the Diplodocus and the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever described, plus a dazzling hall of minerals and gems.
Photo: User:Piotrus, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Museum · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County
Albert Barnes's extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse and more, hung as he arranged it.
Photo: Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
National historic site · Scranton, Lackawanna County
A historic rail yard where steam locomotives fill a working roundhouse, with museums of railroading and a Union Pacific Big Boy among the giants on display.
Photo: National Park Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Art museum · Pittsburgh, Allegheny County
Seven floors devoted to Andy Warhol, with paintings, films, time capsules and a room of floating silver pillows to play among.
Railroad museum · Strasburg Township, Lancaster County
More than 100 historic locomotives and railcars, many gleaming under one vast roof, trace the story of railroading in Pennsylvania, across the road from a working steam railroad.
The full list
The spot where Edwin Drake struck oil in 1859 and launched the modern petroleum industry, with a replica engine house and derrick, an oil-history museum and trails along Oil Creek.
The birthplace of American independence: Independence Hall, where the Declaration and the Constitution were adopted, the Liberty Bell, Congress Hall and blocks of historic buildings.
Art, natural science and ancient civilizations under one roof, plus a planetarium and an arboretum with paths winding around the museum's landscaped grounds.
The gateway to Presque Isle, with exhibits on the peninsula's dunes, wetlands and Lake Erie ecology, and an observation tower with views over the bay and lake.
A Lancaster County farm presented as an Amish homestead, with guided tours of an 1805 farmhouse, a one-room schoolhouse, barnyard animals, and bus tours of the surrounding countryside.
The 1861 Italianate mansion of railroad magnate Asa Packer, founder of Lehigh University, on a hillside above town, with much of its original furniture in place.
The small colonial house associated with Betsy Ross, the upholsterer said to have sewn the first Stars and Stripes, with period rooms and a costumed interpreter.
A three-foot-gauge railroad from the 1870s brought back to life, with steam excursions from Rockhill and an unusually complete set of old shops, roundhouse and yards.
Henry Chapman Mercer's eccentric poured-concrete castle, a warren of 44 rooms built between 1908 and 1912 and studded with tiles from his own works and from around the world.
A full-scale reconstruction of the British fort built in 1758 during the Forbes campaign, with earthworks, cannon and a museum of French and Indian War artifacts.
The riverside home and laboratory of Joseph Priestley, the English chemist credited with discovering oxygen, who settled here after emigrating in 1794.
Formerly the Carnegie Science Center and renamed the Kamin Science Center in 2025, with hands-on exhibits, a planetarium, a detailed miniature railroad and village, and the submarine USS Requin outside.
Pennsylvania German rural life, shown in a village of historic homes, shops and farm buildings where costumed interpreters demonstrate old crafts and tend heirloom gardens and livestock.
A rock overhang holding some of the oldest evidence of people in North America, with a re-created 16th-century Indian village and a 19th-century rural village.
A re-created village of log and frame buildings where costumed interpreters demonstrate frontier trades and daily life of the 1700s and 1800s.
The final home of the Harmony Society, a celibate Christian community, with their 1820s brick and frame buildings, craft workshops and formal garden.
A re-created early-1900s logging camp, a steam-powered sawmill and a 70-ton Shay locomotive tell the story of the lumber boom that stripped and remade the state's northern forests.
Rodin's Thinker greets visitors at the gate and The Gates of Hell frame the entrance to this Beaux-Arts museum and garden on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Rural life in the Laurel Highlands, told through a 1770s settler's cabin, an early farmstead, a maple sugar camp and the relocated 1859 Walter's Mill covered bridge.
Pennsylvania's story from dinosaurs to the industrial age, told beside the Capitol, with Peter Rothermel's enormous painting of Pickett's Charge and a planetarium.
A historic rail yard where steam locomotives fill a working roundhouse, with museums of railroading and a Union Pacific Big Boy among the giants on display.
Henry Clay Frick's restored mansion, Clayton, along with a car and carriage museum, an art museum and a greenhouse on landscaped grounds.
Army history from the Revolution to today, told in a Soldier Experience Gallery and along an outdoor trail lined with re-created trenches, barracks and fortifications.
A 19th-century distilling village where Old Overholt rye whiskey began and industrialist Henry Clay Frick was born, with museums in its old brick and stone buildings.
The Delaware River home where the western novelist began his writing career, now a National Park Service museum near Roebling's historic aqueduct.
Vintage cars from the horseless-carriage era to the muscle-car years fill the Antique Automobile Club of America's museum, which also holds a gallery of rare Tucker sedans and a museum of buses.
America's oldest natural science research institution, founded in 1812, with dinosaur skeletons, dioramas and a live butterfly room.
Opened for the 1976 Bicentennial, this pioneering museum explores African American history and culture, including the lives of the city's free Black community in the nation's first century.
European Renaissance and Baroque paintings from the Kress collection and American art, along with a complete Frank Lloyd Wright library rescued from a Minnesota house.
Cars, trucks and motorcycles tell the story of over-the-road travel at this museum beside the Lehigh River, from an 1889 gas-powered carriage to Mack trucks built in the Lehigh Valley.
Seven floors devoted to Andy Warhol, with paintings, films, time capsules and a room of floating silver pillows to play among.
Set in an old stone mill at Pine Grove Furnace, close to the trail's halfway point, this small museum honors hikers such as Earl Shaffer, who made the first recorded thru-hike in 1948.
Albert Barnes's extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse and more, hung as he arranged it.
Horse-drawn carriages, sleighs and early motor vehicles made in southeastern Pennsylvania, shown in a former truck-body factory beside the 1872 carriage shop where that company got its start.
Three generations of Wyeth family art in a converted 19th-century grist mill on the Brandywine River, surrounded by native-plant gardens.
Ancient to contemporary art, a Hall of Architecture filled with plaster casts of great buildings, and the long-running Carnegie International exhibition.
Dinosaurs posed in lifelike scenes, among them Dippy the Diplodocus and the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever described, plus a dazzling hall of minerals and gems.
The county's history museum and research library, with tall-case clocks, early furniture, quilts and historic clothing, and exhibits on three centuries of local stories.
Hands-on play for kids in the old Allegheny post office and Buhl Planetarium buildings, with a makerspace, water-play room and art studio.
Kids can mold, name and wrap their own crayons, melt wax into art and lose hours in hands-on color activities at this attraction run by the crayon maker.
A big hands-on science center that moved downtown in 2024, where families can explore physics, the human body, engineering and more through interactive exhibits.
The home and studio of early modernist painter Charles Demuth, where changing shows of his watercolors and paintings hang steps from the garden that inspired his flower pictures.
A towering 1859 stone mansion in Germantown furnished in high Victorian style, with restored period gardens and exhibits on mid-19th-century domestic life.
This town's munitions plant made bombs and shells for the Allies, and the museum honors those home-front workers, most of them women, alongside dioramas, weapons and uniforms from the war.
Restored trolleys and exhibits on electric streetcar history, with rides that roll past the old iron furnaces and through a nearly mile-long tunnel.
Changing exhibitions and a wide-ranging collection strong in American ceramics, Asian art and bronze sculpture, shown partly in the marble 1839 Greek Revival Customs House downtown.
Home port of the U.S. Brig Niagara, a reconstruction of Oliver Hazard Perry's flagship, with exhibits on the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie and the region's maritime past.
Founded in 1908 in Nay Aug Park, this museum of natural history, science and art shows dinosaurs, birds, Dorflinger glass and folk art.
