99 places
Where the nation began, ringed by gardens and river towns
Photo: Bev Sykes from Davis, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Philadelphia is where the United States began. The Declaration of Independence was adopted here in 1776 and the Constitution written here in 1787, and Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell still stand a short walk apart in the old city, among cobbled lanes and colonial brick. The city's museums could fill a week, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the top of its famous steps to the Barnes Foundation and the Museum of the American Revolution.
The countryside starts quickly. Washington's army spent the hard winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, now a great rolling park. In Bucks County the Delaware Canal towpath runs past stone farmhouses to New Hope, and to the west, along the Main Line and in the Brandywine Valley, lie Chanticleer, Longwood Gardens and a ring of arboretums and estate gardens. Few parts of the country have so many so close together.
Highlights
National historical park · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County
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.
Photo: Bev Sykes from Davis, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Public Garden · East Marlborough Township, Chester County
Pierre S. du Pont's garden masterpiece: a vast conservatory, dancing fountains, meadow and woodland walks, and a famous holiday light display.
National historical park · Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County
Where Washington's Continental Army camped through the winter of 1777-78: rolling fields, rebuilt huts, his headquarters and miles of trails.
Photo: Dough4872, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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
Town · New Hope, Bucks County
A riverside arts town across the bridge from Lambertville, with galleries, the Bucks County Playhouse, the canal towpath and a heritage railroad.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pleasure garden · Radnor Township, Delaware County
A former family estate turned 'pleasure garden,' with an imaginative ruin garden, a teacup garden, exuberant borders, and benches and bridges handcrafted by the gardeners themselves.
Photo: Photo by and (c)2007 Derek Ramsey ( Ram-Man ). Co-attribution must be given to the Chanticleer Garden. Both parties have shared, contractual copyright control., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The full list
More than 100 acres of woods and meadows devoted to the region's native plants, with trails along Pidcock Creek that are at their best in spring wildflower season.
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.
Temple University's campus arboretum, rooted in the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women founded in 1910, with a formal perennial garden, woodland paths and native plantings.
The Biddle family's Greek Revival mansion on the Delaware River, with lawns sloping to the water, historic gardens and an arboretum of venerable trees.
Rolling hills, mature trees and sculpted monuments fill this Victorian garden cemetery, West Laurel Hill, now an accredited arboretum and a quiet place for contemplative walks.
A Quaker family's former estate in Germantown, now an open landscape of old trees, meadows and ponds.
The estate arboretum planted by Laura Barnes, wife of collector Albert Barnes, now cared for by Saint Joseph's University, with rare trees, flowering shrubs and perennial borders.
The oldest surviving botanic garden in North America, begun by John Bartram in 1728 on the banks of the Schuylkill River.
Three generations of Wyeth family art in a converted 19th-century grist mill on the Brandywine River, surrounded by native-plant gardens.
Opened in 2025 on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a contemplative setting for Alexander Calder's sculptures, with a building by Herzog & de Meuron and gardens by Piet Oudolf.
A former family estate turned 'pleasure garden,' with an imaginative ruin garden, a teacup garden, exuberant borders, and benches and bridges handcrafted by the gardeners themselves.
The whole college campus is an arboretum, with a duck pond, a pinetum and a nature trail that loops past grand old trees and open fields.
A rocky hillside garden of native plants gathered by botanist Mary Gibson Henry on her collecting expeditions, many of them through the Southeast, and kept as a living research collection.
Woodland paths wind past rhododendrons, azaleas and native wildflowers around a pond in this naturalistic garden, which reaches its peak in late spring.
Pierre S. du Pont's garden masterpiece: a vast conservatory, dancing fountains, meadow and woodland walks, and a famous holiday light display.
The University of Pennsylvania's arboretum in Chestnut Hill, with a walk through the tree canopy, a Victorian fernery and a garden railway.
A college campus planted as a garden, with a beloved rose garden, a tree-shaded outdoor amphitheater and trails into the woods along Crum Creek.
Replanted with native species, the gardens of this former Main Line estate, now run by the conservation group Natural Lands, spread among old trees, lawns, meadows and woodland.
One of the oldest arboretums in the Northeast, with venerable trees, wildflower meadows and miles of woodland trails.
A Japanese house and garden in 17th-century style, built in Japan for display at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s, now set beside a koi pond in Fairmount Park.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Albert Barnes's extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse and more, hung as he arranged it.
Three generations of Wyeth family art in a converted 19th-century grist mill on the Brandywine River, surrounded by native-plant gardens.
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.
A towering 1859 stone mansion in Germantown furnished in high Victorian style, with restored period gardens and exhibits on mid-19th-century domestic life.
Philadelphia's landmark science museum, home of the giant walk-through heart and the Fels Planetarium.
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.
A village in Lower Bucks County that grew up around its Quaker meetinghouses, with buildings spanning three centuries.
Philadelphia's maritime museum on Penn's Landing, with the cruiser Olympia and the World War II submarine Becuna to explore.
Pennsylvania Impressionist landscapes and other art of the Bucks County region, in a museum built inside the walls of the old county jail.
A community art center founded in 1937, with changing gallery exhibitions of contemporary work and studio classes for artists of all ages and abilities.
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.
The story of the Revolution told through objects such as George Washington's own field tent, a short walk from Independence Hall.
The College of Physicians' famous museum of medical history, with anatomical specimens, antique instruments and curiosities.
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.
Glass art and stories of heroes celebrate freedom in this museum, crowned by Dale Chihuly's towering red 'Flame of Liberty' sculpture.
The University of Pennsylvania's archaeology and anthropology museum, with a colossal Egyptian sphinx and treasures from the royal tombs of Ur.
Founded in 1805 as America's first art museum and school, showing American paintings and sculpture in Frank Furness's flamboyant 1876 building.
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.
Isaiah Zagar's mosaic labyrinth of tiles, mirrors, bottles and found objects, covering a block on South Street.
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.
Founded in 1915, this gallery champions contemporary prints and photography, with changing exhibitions and a long-running international competition.
Two townhouses filled with rare books and manuscripts, including James Joyce's handwritten Ulysses and Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula.
One of the oldest arboretums in the Northeast, with venerable trees, wildflower meadows and miles of woodland trails.
Fossils, minerals and mounted animals in original cherry cases fill this Victorian natural history museum, preserved almost unchanged inside its 1865 hall.
Jewish life in America from the 1650s to the present, told through artifacts and personal stories at a Smithsonian affiliate on Independence Mall.
The hand-built hillside studio and home of craftsman Wharton Esherick, filled with his sculptural furniture and a spiraling staircase, shown on guided tours.
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.
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.
A vast 1829 prison, its cellblocks left in haunting ruin, where Al Capone once served time; now a museum about American justice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Henry Mercer's Spanish Mission-style concrete tile factory, where artisans still make handmade tiles using his Arts and Crafts designs and methods.
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.
The Pennsylvania shore where Washington's army set out across the icy Delaware on Christmas night 1776, with historic buildings and a yearly reenactment.
The first American home of John James Audubon, now a museum of his bird art set amid woods, meadows and trails along Perkiomen Creek that are rich in birdlife.
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.
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.
Classical temples on the Schuylkill below the art museum that once pumped the city's water, now an interpretive center about the river and its watershed, beside Boathouse Row.
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.
William Penn's country estate on the Delaware River, with a 1930s re-creation of his manor house, gardens, outbuildings, farm animals and demonstrations of 17th-century life.
Frank Lloyd Wright's only synagogue, a soaring translucent pyramid meant to evoke Mount Sinai, completed in 1959 and still home to an active congregation that offers tours.
Part of the ground of the 1777 Battle of Brandywine, one of the largest battles of the Revolution, with the farmhouses used as quarters by Washington and Lafayette.
Benjamin Chew's Germantown country house, held by British troops against Washington's attack in the Battle of Germantown in 1777, now a house museum of the National Trust.
A towering 1859 stone mansion in Germantown furnished in high Victorian style, with restored period gardens and exhibits on mid-19th-century domestic life.
The brick house where Edgar Allan Poe lived in the early 1840s, the only one of his city homes to survive, including a cellar that recalls his story The Black Cat.
Often called the nation's oldest continuously inhabited residential street, a narrow cobbled lane of 18th-century brick rowhouses, with a small museum house open to visitors.
On the Delaware River marshes, a stone fort whose 1777 siege held up the British fleet, with barracks, casemates and stories of later service as a Civil War prison.
The 1720s stone mansion of colonial governor Sir William Keith, later home of the poet Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, with remarkably original interiors set among open fields.
A village in Lower Bucks County that grew up around its Quaker meetinghouses, with buildings spanning three centuries.
A Georgian mansion of the 1740s, used as the army's medical headquarters during Washington's Whitemarsh encampment, and later filled by collectors with colonial and Federal furnishings.
A Victorian garden cemetery founded in 1836 on bluffs above the Schuylkill, with elaborate monuments, fine sculpture and river views, explored on guided tours and events.
A vast 1829 prison, its cellblocks left in haunting ruin, where Al Capone once served time; now a museum about American justice.
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.
A Japanese house and garden in 17th-century style, built in Japan for display at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s, now set beside a koi pond in Fairmount Park.
Where Washington's Continental Army camped through the winter of 1777-78: rolling fields, rebuilt huts, his headquarters and miles of trails.
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.
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.
A Brandywine Valley village known for the Wyeth family of painters, the Brandywine Museum of Art and the 1777 Battle of Brandywine.
The Bucks County seat, home of Henry Mercer's three concrete landmarks (the Mercer Museum, Fonthill Castle and the Moravian Tile Works) and the Michener Art Museum.
A walkable small town that calls itself the Mushroom Capital of the World, with restaurants and galleries along State Street and Longwood Gardens just outside.
A riverside arts town across the bridge from Lambertville, with galleries, the Bucks County Playhouse, the canal towpath and a heritage railroad.
A village of shops, restaurants and an inn among landscaped gardens in Lahaska, with seasonal festivals and holiday lights.
The Chester County seat, a handsome college town of brick and green serpentine stone, with a Greek Revival courthouse and a lively downtown of restaurants and shops.
A long reservoir in the rolling hills, busy with sailboats and anglers, with a marina, a swimming pool, cabins, a paved bike path and bridle trails along the shore.
The Schofield Ford Covered Bridge spans Neshaminy Creek in this park of old farm fields and woodland, laced with paved paths and bridle trails and home to a historic mill.
Nearly 60 miles of towpath along a 19th-century canal that still runs unbroken from Easton to Bristol, passing locks, river islands and old canal towns such as New Hope.
Crops still grow on land farmed since the 1700s, and paved paths loop past fields, old stone farmhouses and barns, woodlots and a trout nursery along Stony Creek.
Sailboats and kayaks share a big reservoir that covers the old village of Milford Mills, while trails wind through the surrounding hills and a swimming pool cools summer crowds.
Where Neshaminy Creek meets the tidal Delaware River, with a big swimming pool, a marina and a riverside walk looking out across the water.
Hawk watchers crowd the observation deck each fall as raptors stream south over hills where Washington's army dug in during the autumn of 1777, weeks before Valley Forge.
Rock climbers scale the cliffs of High Rocks above a horseshoe bend of Tohickon Creek, whitewater paddlers run it on release weekends, and picnickers spread out along its banks below.
Wooded hills and meadows along a trout stream, with a paved multi-use loop, bridle paths and the old mill village of Sycamore Mills; the Tyler Arboretum is right next door.
The Pennsylvania shore where Washington's army set out across the icy Delaware on Christmas night 1776, with historic buildings and a yearly reenactment.
A meandering creek has carved wooded ridges and ravines into this green island in the suburbs, with a 1792 stone-arch bridge at its edge and trails for hikers, riders and mountain bikers.
A quiet valley along a federally designated Wild and Scenic River, with trails that continue across the state line into Delaware and an 18th-century Baptist meetinghouse.
Rolling old farm fields and woods along a clean, high-quality creek near the Maryland line, crossed by trails for hikers, cyclists and riders and alive with birds.
A sprawling community garden, a radio-control flying field and trails through meadows and woods fill the only state park inside city limits.
The largest freshwater tidal marsh left in Pennsylvania, just beyond the airport runways, with boardwalks, a visitor center and trails where herons, egrets and migrating songbirds are easy to spot.
The first American home of John James Audubon, now a museum of his bird art set amid woods, meadows and trails along Perkiomen Creek that are rich in birdlife.
A deep, wooded gorge cut by Wissahickon Creek, with car-free Forbidden Drive along the water, the 1850s Valley Green Inn, a covered bridge and rugged trails up schist cliffs.
Small, scattered tracts in the southeast corner of the state, the best known being Goat Hill, a rare serpentine barren of rocky grassland and plants found almost nowhere else in Pennsylvania.
Where Washington's Continental Army camped through the winter of 1777-78: rolling fields, rebuilt huts, his headquarters and miles of trails.
A deep, wooded gorge cut by Wissahickon Creek, with car-free Forbidden Drive along the water, the 1850s Valley Green Inn, a covered bridge and rugged trails up schist cliffs.
Beginning in Center City, a long riverside trail runs past Boathouse Row and Manayunk to Valley Forge and beyond, paved through the city and busy with cyclists, runners and walkers.
Beginning in Center City, a long riverside trail runs past Boathouse Row and Manayunk to Valley Forge and beyond, paved through the city and busy with cyclists, runners and walkers.
From the Schuylkill River Trail at Oaks, this rail trail follows Perkiomen Creek up to Green Lane Park, through creekside parks, woods and small villages.
A theme park built around Sesame Street, with rides and water slides for young children, a character parade and chances to meet Elmo, Big Bird and friends.
Hand-feed giraffes, come face to face with jaguars and zip-line through the treetops above bison and elk at this friendly mid-sized zoo.
America's first zoo, opened in 1874, with big cats, primates and Zoo360 trails that let animals roam over visitors' heads.
