40 places
Three rivers, steep hills and a city of great museums
Photo: John, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pittsburgh sits where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio, and the best way to understand it is from above. Ride one of the old inclines up Mount Washington and the city is laid out below you: the fountain at the Point, where French and British forts once stood, the bridges, and the neighborhoods climbing the steep hills.
Steel made Pittsburgh rich, and much of the money went into culture. The Carnegie museums of art and natural history, known for their dinosaurs, share a building in Oakland near the Victorian glasshouse of Phipps Conservatory, and the Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side honors the pop artist who was born here. Kennywood, a classic old amusement park, is just up the Monongahela. Beyond the city the countryside rolls out in farms and woods, with the rocky gorge and old gristmill at McConnells Mill and the big lake at Moraine State Park.
Highlights
State park · Pittsburgh, Allegheny County
At the tip of downtown, where the Allegheny and Monongahela meet to form the Ohio, with the great fountain, the Fort Pitt Museum and the 1764 Blockhouse from the frontier fort.
Photo: John, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Conservatory and botanical garden · Pittsburgh, Allegheny County
Orchids, tropical forest rooms and seasonal flower shows fill a glittering 1893 Victorian glasshouse in Schenley Park, beside a pioneering green building.
Photo: Dllu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Funicular · Pittsburgh, Allegheny County
A cable railway of 1877 climbing Mount Washington in its original wooden cars, with an observation deck looking straight down onto the rivers, the Point and downtown.
Photo: Plastikspork, CC BY-SA 3.0, 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
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.
Amusement park · West Mifflin, Allegheny County
Perched on a bluff above the Monongahela, a classic amusement park and National Historic Landmark, with vintage wooden coasters like the Jack Rabbit alongside modern thrill rides.
The full list
Former coal-mining land west of the city, being healed into a botanic garden of woodland walks, display gardens and a lotus pond fed by treated mine water.
Orchids, tropical forest rooms and seasonal flower shows fill a glittering 1893 Victorian glasshouse in Schenley Park, beside a pioneering green building.
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.
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.
The final home of the Harmony Society, a celibate Christian community, with their 1820s brick and frame buildings, craft workshops and formal garden.
Henry Clay Frick's restored mansion, Clayton, along with a car and carriage museum, an art museum and a greenhouse on landscaped grounds.
Seven floors devoted to Andy Warhol, with paintings, films, time capsules and a room of floating silver pillows to play among.
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.
Hands-on play for kids in the old Allegheny post office and Buhl Planetarium buildings, with a makerspace, water-play room and art studio.
Inside a reconstructed bastion of the 1760s fort at the Point, exhibits tell the story of the French and Indian War and the struggle for the forks of the Ohio.
Western Pennsylvania history in a former ice warehouse in the Strip District, with sets from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and a sports museum full of local legends.
The actor's hometown museum, with posters, costumes and personal mementos tracing his life from local hardware-store son to Hollywood star and wartime bomber pilot.
Room-size art installations you walk into, including permanent works by James Turrell and Yayoi Kusama, in former factory buildings on the North Side.
Ride restored streetcars along a country line and tour barns full of trolleys from across Pennsylvania and beyond, including a New Orleans car from the famed Desire line.
Built to honor Civil War veterans, this grand Beaux-Arts memorial hall now salutes all branches of the military, with artifacts from the Civil War to recent conflicts.
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.
A cable railway of 1877 climbing Mount Washington in its original wooden cars, with an observation deck looking straight down onto the rivers, the Point and downtown.
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.
The final home of the Harmony Society, a celibate Christian community, with their 1820s brick and frame buildings, craft workshops and formal garden.
Henry Clay Frick's restored mansion, Clayton, along with a car and carriage museum, an art museum and a greenhouse on landscaped grounds.
Rising 42 stories at the heart of the university campus, a Gothic skyscraper with a vaulted stone Commons Room and the Nationality Rooms, classrooms styled after cultures worldwide.
A 1920s Tudor-style mansion and its stables sit amid rolling meadows and woods, with house tours, trails and summer concerts on the lawn.
Opened in 1870 and widely described as the country's oldest continuously operating funicular, it climbs Mount Washington from Station Square to the overlooks on Grandview Avenue.
A small town founded in 1804 by German Pietist followers of George Rapp, with sturdy brick buildings, a history museum and the Harmonists' walled cemetery.
Lake Arthur, a favorite of sailors, fills a valley once scarred by coal mines and oil wells, now restored as rolling woods and fields with beaches, cabins and a lakeside bike trail.
Spring wildflowers carpet the park's renowned Wildflower Reserve, Raccoon Lake has a beach and boating, and a short trail leads to the old Frankfort Mineral Springs.
A broad lake known among birders for migrating ducks, loons and shorebirds, with a swimming beach, boating and trails near the route of the old Kittanning Path.
A gorge carved by glacial meltwater, its creek churning past giant boulders, with an 1800s gristmill, a covered bridge, the short trail to Hell's Hollow Falls and whitewater for experts only.
At the tip of downtown, where the Allegheny and Monongahela meet to form the Ohio, with the great fountain, the Fort Pitt Museum and the 1764 Blockhouse from the frontier fort.
A frontier fort of the 1790s gave its name to this park in steep, wooded hills near the West Virginia line, with a swimming pool, cabins, a campground and quiet woodland trails.
Rolling former strip-mine land reclaimed as woods and fields, managed largely for hunting but laced with trails used by hikers, horseback riders and mountain bikers.
A big wooded park on the edge of the university district, with Phipps Conservatory, the trails and lake of Panther Hollow, a public golf course, a running track and an ice rink.
Wooded ravines and miles of trails make up the largest of the city's parks, a bequest from industrialist Henry Clay Frick, with an environmental center and a lawn bowling green.
One of Pennsylvania's few remnants of prairie, bright with purple spikes of blazing star in late July and early August, and among the last homes of the rare eastern massasauga rattlesnake.
Three undeveloped islands in the Allegheny River, reached only by boat, where paddlers can pull up on wooded shores and watch for herons and other river wildlife.
An Army Corps of Engineers flood-control lake in the hills of Armstrong County, used for boating, fishing and picnics by the water.
A 1920s Tudor-style mansion and its stables sit amid rolling meadows and woods, with house tours, trails and summer concerts on the lawn.
Wooded ravines and miles of trails make up the largest of the city's parks, a bequest from industrialist Henry Clay Frick, with an environmental center and a lawn bowling green.
Vanished coal towns once lined this crushed-limestone rail trail along Blacklick Creek, where the stone stack of the 1846 Eliza Furnace still stands beside the path.
Arcing through the countryside west and south of Pittsburgh, a long crushed-stone rail trail with tall trestles, old railroad tunnels and a link toward the Great Allegheny Passage.
Tall slides, a wave pool and a lazy river on the banks of the Monongahela River, with plenty of room for an all-day summer outing.
Perched on a bluff above the Monongahela, a classic amusement park and National Historic Landmark, with vintage wooden coasters like the Jack Rabbit alongside modern thrill rides.
Free-flying birds share walk-through habitats with visitors at this zoo just for birds, where penguins, owls and parrots star in close-up encounters.
African elephants, gorillas and big cats live at this hillside zoo in Highland Park, which also has an aquarium and a Kids Kingdom play area.
