Museums 118
Art, history, science, railroad and children's museums.
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Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
Jewish life in America from the 1650s to the present, told through artifacts and personal stories at a Smithsonian affiliate on Independence Mall.
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Westmoreland Museum of American Art
American art from colonial portraits to contemporary work, with special strength in the artists and landscapes of southwestern Pennsylvania, in a light-filled, expanded building.
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Wharton Esherick Museum
The hand-built hillside studio and home of craftsman Wharton Esherick, filled with his sculptural furniture and a spiraling staircase, shown on guided tours.
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Woodmere Art Museum
Art by the city's own painters, sculptors and craftspeople, shown in a Victorian stone mansion on the edge of the Wissahickon in Chestnut Hill.
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Zippo/Case Museum
Zippo lighters and Case knives fill this company museum, where you can watch technicians repair lighters through a window, and giant lighter-shaped lampposts stand out front.
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Athenaeum of Philadelphia
A members' library founded in 1814, in an 1845 Italianate building on Washington Square, with rich collections on architecture and decorative arts and public exhibitions.
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Eastern State Penitentiary
A vast 1829 prison, its cellblocks left in haunting ruin, where Al Capone once served time; now a museum about American justice.
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Frances M. Maguire Art Museum
Saint Joseph's University's art museum, opened in 2023 in the classical gallery building that once held the Barnes Foundation's collection, with works spanning some 3,000 years.
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Harriton House
The 1704 stone house where Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, spent his later years, now a house museum set among fields and woods.
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Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites
The 18th-century Moravian settlement at the heart of Bethlehem, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with museums and guided tours.
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Lancaster Museum of Art
Changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in an 1840s Greek Revival mansion in downtown Lancaster.
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Simeone Automotive Museum
Historic racing sports cars, from prewar Alfa Romeos to the original Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, shown in period settings, with demonstration days when some are driven out back.
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Susquehanna Art Museum
Harrisburg's art museum, with changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in Midtown, a few blocks from the river.
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Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts
Hands-on science galleries, a giant-screen cinema and a performing-arts theater under one roof in downtown Harrisburg.
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Wyck Historic House, Garden, and Farm
Lived in by one Quaker family for nearly three centuries, a Germantown house with an old-rose garden laid out in the 1820s and a small working farm.
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Eckley Miners' Village
A 19th-century anthracite company town of miners' houses and churches, with a coal breaker built for the 1970 film The Molly Maguires, telling the story of mining families.
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Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour
Descend about 300 feet in a mine car into a real anthracite mine, where guides recount the hard lives of the men and boys who worked underground.
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Mifflinburg Buggy Museum
Preserved almost as its workers left it around 1920, this buggy factory still holds its tools, belts, machinery and parts, recalling the town's days as 'Buggy Town.'
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Historic Grange Estate
An estate whose mansion grew from an early 18th-century farmhouse into a Gothic Revival country seat, with gardens, wooded grounds and a guest list that once included George Washington.
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National Watch & Clock Museum
Thousands of timepieces, from tower clocks and grandfather clocks to pocket watches and early electric clocks, gathered by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
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North Museum of Nature and Science
A family-sized natural history and science museum with fossils, live animals and a planetarium, a short walk from Franklin & Marshall College.
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Randyland
Randy Gilson's riotously colorful folk-art house and courtyard, painted in every hue and filled with found objects, a favorite photo stop in the North Side's Mexican War Streets.
