Museums in Philadelphia & The Countryside 41
Art, history, science, railroad and children's museums.
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Independence National Historical Park
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.
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Betsy Ross House
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.
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Fonthill Castle
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.
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Rodin Museum
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.
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Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
America's oldest natural science research institution, founded in 1812, with dinosaur skeletons, dioramas and a live butterfly room.
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African American Museum in Philadelphia
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.
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Barnes Foundation
Albert Barnes's extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse and more, hung as he arranged it.
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Brandywine Museum of Art
Three generations of Wyeth family art in a converted 19th-century grist mill on the Brandywine River, surrounded by native-plant gardens.
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Chester County History Center
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.
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Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion
A towering 1859 stone mansion in Germantown furnished in high Victorian style, with restored period gardens and exhibits on mid-19th-century domestic life.
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Franklin Institute
Philadelphia's landmark science museum, home of the giant walk-through heart and the Fels Planetarium.
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Glencairn Museum
Built for the Pitcairn family as a castle-like Romanesque-style home, now a museum of religious art and artifacts from ancient Egypt to medieval Europe, next to the cathedral the family also built.
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Historic Fallsington
A village in Lower Bucks County that grew up around its Quaker meetinghouses, with buildings spanning three centuries.
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Independence Seaport Museum
Philadelphia's maritime museum on Penn's Landing, with the cruiser Olympia and the World War II submarine Becuna to explore.
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James A. Michener Art Museum
Pennsylvania Impressionist landscapes and other art of the Bucks County region, in a museum built inside the walls of the old county jail.
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Main Line Art Center
A community art center founded in 1937, with changing gallery exhibitions of contemporary work and studio classes for artists of all ages and abilities.
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Mercer Museum
Henry Mercer's six-story concrete castle, packed with tools of early American trades, with a whaleboat, wagons and carriages hanging in its soaring central court.
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Moravian Pottery and Tile Works
Henry Mercer's Spanish Mission-style concrete tile factory, where artisans still make handmade tiles using his Arts and Crafts designs and methods.
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Museum of the American Revolution
The story of the Revolution told through objects such as George Washington's own field tent, a short walk from Independence Hall.
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Mütter Museum
The College of Physicians' famous museum of medical history, with anatomical specimens, antique instruments and curiosities.
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National Constitution Center
A museum devoted to the U.S. Constitution on Independence Mall, with a stirring theater show and a hall of life-size bronze statues of the signers.
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National Liberty Museum
Glass art and stories of heroes celebrate freedom in this museum, crowned by Dale Chihuly's towering red 'Flame of Liberty' sculpture.
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Penn Museum
The University of Pennsylvania's archaeology and anthropology museum, with a colossal Egyptian sphinx and treasures from the royal tombs of Ur.
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Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Founded in 1805 as America's first art museum and school, showing American paintings and sculpture in Frank Furness's flamboyant 1876 building.
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Philadelphia Museum of Art
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.
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Philadelphia's Magic Gardens
Isaiah Zagar's mosaic labyrinth of tiles, mirrors, bottles and found objects, covering a block on South Street.
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Please Touch Museum
A children's museum built for play, inside Memorial Hall from the 1876 Centennial Exposition, with hands-on exhibits, a Wonderland maze and a restored antique carousel.
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Print Center
Founded in 1915, this gallery champions contemporary prints and photography, with changing exhibitions and a long-running international competition.
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Rosenbach Museum & Library
Two townhouses filled with rare books and manuscripts, including James Joyce's handwritten Ulysses and Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula.
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Tyler Arboretum
One of the oldest arboretums in the Northeast, with venerable trees, wildflower meadows and miles of woodland trails.
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Wagner Free Institute of Science
Fossils, minerals and mounted animals in original cherry cases fill this Victorian natural history museum, preserved almost unchanged inside its 1865 hall.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
