In a few blocks of old Philadelphia you can stand in the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed, walk Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the country, and stop at the President’s House site, where the outlines of the quarters that held George Washington’s enslaved staff are now marked into the ground a block from the Liberty Bell. The founding story and its contradictions sit within sight of each other here.
I spent a career teaching American history before joining my sons at More Than Just Parks, and no city rewards a history lover like this one. These are the 15 Philadelphia landmarks I would send you to, counted down from number 15.
Philadelphia Landmarks At A Glance
Here is a quick comparison of all 15 landmarks before we dig into the stories behind each one.
| Landmark | Type | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Independence Hall & Liberty Bell | National park site (NPS) / UNESCO | 1753 |
| Rocky Statue & Art Museum Steps | Cultural icon | 1980 (statue) |
| Benjamin Franklin Museum | Museum (NPS) | 1976 |
| Betsy Ross House | Historic house museum | c. 1740 |
| Carpenters’ Hall | Historic hall (NHL) | 1774 |
| President’s House | Memorial site (NPS) | 2010 (memorial) |
| Second Bank of the United States | Historic bank (NHL) | 1824 |
| B. Free Franklin Post Office | Working post office (NPS) | Franklin era |
| Mother Bethel AME Church | Historic church (NHL) | 1794 founded |
| Museum of the American Revolution | History museum | 2017 |
| Elfreth’s Alley | Historic street (NHL) | 1700s |
| African American Museum in Philadelphia | Museum | 1976 |
| National Constitution Center | Museum | 2003 |
| Powel House | Historic house museum (NHL) | 1765 |
| American Philosophical Society Museum | Museum | 1743 (society) |
Many of these sites belong to Independence National Historical Park. For more, see our guides to the best historic sites in Pennsylvania and the country’s top Revolutionary War sites.
109 public lands destinations are under threat. Get the free weekly briefing that 25,000+ people use to stay informed and take action.
15. American Philosophical Society Museum
The American Philosophical Society Museum, just steps from Independence Hall, explores the meeting point of science, history, and art. It belongs to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the country, founded by Benjamin Franklin and others in 1743.
The society has counted Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein among its members, and it was the institution that received and stored the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The museum, housed in Philosophical Hall, mounts changing exhibitions drawn from a remarkable collection of rare books, manuscripts, scientific instruments, and art. It remains a working center of scholarship rather than a static display.
14. Powel House
The Powel House in Society Hill is one of the finest surviving Georgian townhouses in the country, built in 1765 for Samuel Powel, the wealthy merchant who became the last mayor of Philadelphia under British rule and the first under American rule.
Powel and his wife Elizabeth filled the house with fine woodwork and plasterwork, and it became a center of Revolutionary-era society. George Washington, John Adams, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Benjamin Franklin were all guests here, and Elizabeth Powel was a confidante of Washington whose letters urged him to seek a second term. The house was nearly demolished in the early 20th century before the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks bought it in 1931 and restored it. It is now a National Historic Landmark open for tours.
13. National Constitution Center
The National Constitution Center on Independence Mall is the only institution chartered by Congress to spread understanding of the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis. It opened on July 4, 2003.
The signature exhibition, “The Story of We the People,” uses interactive displays, a theater-in-the-round show, and rare documents to trace the Constitution from 1787 to today. Signers’ Hall holds 42 life-size bronze statues of the Framers, and the center displays a rare original public printing of the Constitution. It also serves as a national venue for debates and civic programs.
12. The African American Museum in Philadelphia
The African American Museum in Philadelphia, known as AAMP, was the first museum built and funded by a major U.S. city to preserve and interpret African American history and culture. It opened on Arch Street during the 1976 Bicentennial.
Originally the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, AAMP grew out of a push by Black scholars, artists, and activists who wanted the African American story told fully in the city where so much of the nation began. Its core exhibition, “Audacious Freedom,” traces the lives of African Americans in Philadelphia from 1776 to 1876, a period when the city held the largest free Black community in the North. The museum’s four galleries also host changing shows on the African diaspora and contemporary culture.
11. Elfreth’s Alley
Elfreth’s Alley in Old City is widely called the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the United States. People have lived in its narrow brick rowhouses since the 1720s.
Named for blacksmith Jeremiah Elfreth, the cobblestone lane was home to the artisans and tradespeople of the colonial port, including free African American craftspeople who helped build the city’s economy. Thirty-two houses, dating from about 1720 to 1830, still stand. A residents’ association rescued the street from demolition in the 1930s, and it is now a National Historic Landmark. Two of the homes operate as the Elfreth’s Alley Museum.
10. Museum of the American Revolution
The Museum of the American Revolution, opened in 2017, tells the full story of how the nation was won, just steps from Independence Hall. Its great treasure is the actual tent George Washington used as his sleeping and office quarters through much of the war.
The galleries follow the Revolution from the first stirrings of protest through the war and the fragile founding, and they make room for the people often left out of the story, including enslaved and free African Americans, Native nations, and women. Immersive set pieces include a full-scale privateer ship and a re-creation of Boston’s Liberty Tree, building to the climactic display of Washington’s headquarters tent.
9. Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church
Mother Bethel AME Church is the birthplace of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and stands on the oldest parcel of land in the United States continuously owned by African Americans. Its founder, Richard Allen, is one of the towering figures of early American history.
Allen, born into slavery, bought his own freedom and, with Absalom Jones, left St. George’s Methodist Church after enduring its segregation. They formed the Free African Society, a mutual aid group, and Allen went on to organize Bethel Church in 1794. In 1816 he united several Black congregations into the independent AME Church and became its first bishop. The congregation sheltered freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad, and the present 1890 Gothic Revival building, the fourth on the site, is a National Historic Landmark with a small museum and Allen’s tomb.
8. B. Free Franklin Post Office & Museum
The B. Free Franklin Post Office on Market Street honors Benjamin Franklin’s role in building the American postal system. It is the only active post office in the country that flies no U.S. flag, because there was no national flag when Franklin served as the first Postmaster General.
The Continental Congress named Franklin Postmaster General in 1775, and he is said to have signed mail “B. Free Franklin,” the name the post office carries today. Run as part of Independence National Historical Park, it still cancels mail with a special Franklin postmark that collectors prize. A small upstairs museum interprets early American postal history, and the adjacent Franklin Court complex holds more of the Franklin story.
7. Second Bank of the United States
The Second Bank of the United States is a marble Greek Revival temple on Chestnut Street and one of the great early monuments of American architecture. The federally chartered bank operated here from the 1820s until its charter lapsed in 1836.
Chartered in 1816 as successor to Alexander Hamilton’s First Bank, the Second Bank served as the nation’s central bank. Architect William Strickland modeled its facade on the Parthenon, and the building was completed in 1824. It became the center of a fierce political fight when President Andrew Jackson, who saw it as a tool of the wealthy, vetoed its recharter in 1832 and drained its federal deposits. Today the building is a National Historic Landmark housing a portrait gallery of early Americans painted by Charles Willson Peale and others.
6. The President’s House
The President’s House site marks the executive mansion that George Washington and John Adams occupied while Philadelphia was the national capital from 1790 to 1800. It is now an open-air memorial that confronts a hard truth: the first president held people in slavery here, on the doorstep of the nation’s founding ideals.
The mansion was built around 1767 by the widow Mary Masters and later passed to her family through marriage to Pennsylvania governor Richard Penn. When the capital moved to Philadelphia, Washington leased the house from financier Robert Morris. Washington brought nine enslaved people from Mount Vernon to serve there, among them Ona “Oney” Judge, who slipped away to freedom in 1796, and the celebrated cook Hercules, who escaped in 1797. The memorial, dedicated in 2010, traces the house’s footprint and tells their stories alongside those of the presidents.
Top 5 Philadelphia Landmarks
5. Carpenters’ Hall
Carpenters’ Hall is the handsome brick guild hall where the First Continental Congress met in 1774, the first time delegates from the colonies gathered to act together. It earns its nickname as a birthplace of American self-government.
Built in 1774 for the Carpenters’ Company, a builders’ guild founded in 1724, the hall hosted delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that September as they drafted a statement of grievances against the Intolerable Acts and agreed to boycott British goods. The building later served as a hospital and as early offices for both the First and Second Banks of the United States. Remarkably, the Carpenters’ Company still owns and operates it. It is a National Historic Landmark, open to the public.
4. Betsy Ross House
The Betsy Ross House on Arch Street is celebrated as the home of the seamstress traditionally credited with sewing the first American flag. The colonial rowhouse is one of Philadelphia’s most visited sites.
According to the story passed down by her descendants, a committee that included George Washington asked Ross to make a flag of thirteen stripes and thirteen stars in 1776. Historians caution that the tale cannot be fully proven, but Ross was a real upholsterer who did sew flags, and she lived and worked in this Old City neighborhood. The early 18th-century house was saved as a memorial in the early 1900s and now operates as a museum, where costumed interpreters portray Ross and demonstrate colonial trades.
3. Benjamin Franklin Museum
The Benjamin Franklin Museum, in Franklin Court, celebrates the printer, scientist, diplomat, and founder who shaped Philadelphia and the nation. It sits on the very block where Franklin lived and ran his businesses.
Run by the National Park Service, the underground museum first opened in 1976 for the Bicentennial and reopened in 2013 after a full redesign. Interactive galleries explore Franklin’s many lives, from his start as a printer’s apprentice to his work on electricity, his civic inventions, and his diplomacy in France. Above ground, Robert Venturi’s steel “ghost structure” outlines the footprint of Franklin’s vanished house, and the working Franklin print shop and the B. Free Franklin Post Office complete the court.
2. The Rocky Statue and Art Museum Steps
Not every Philadelphia landmark dates to the Revolution. The Rocky Statue and the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art have become a global symbol of the underdog, thanks to one unforgettable training run.
In the 1976 film “Rocky,” Sylvester Stallone’s boxer sprints up the museum’s 72 stone steps and throws his arms overhead in triumph, a scene that turned the staircase into a pilgrimage site. Sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg created the bronze Rocky statue for a later film, and after some debate over whether movie memorabilia belonged at an art museum, the city installed it permanently near the base of the steps in 2006. Visitors run the steps and pose with the statue daily, and the museum’s own world-class art collection waits at the top.
1. Independence Hall & The Liberty Bell
Our number one Philadelphia landmark is Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the heart of Independence National Historical Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There is no more important address in American history.
Built between 1732 and 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall is where the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and where the Constitutional Convention drafted the United States Constitution in 1787. The Liberty Bell, once hung in the tower of this building, cracked beyond use in the 1800s but became a treasured emblem of freedom, embraced by abolitionists who took its inscription, “proclaim liberty throughout all the land,” to heart. It now sits in the glass-walled Liberty Bell Center across the street.
Independence National Historical Park was established in 1948 and dedicated in 1956, and it protects more than 20 historic buildings across its grounds, including Congress Hall, where the U.S. Congress met in the 1790s, and Old City Hall, the early home of the Supreme Court. A free timed ticket is required to tour Independence Hall in the busy season.
The Full Ranking
- Independence Hall & The Liberty Bell
- The Rocky Statue and Art Museum Steps
- Benjamin Franklin Museum
- Betsy Ross House
- Carpenters’ Hall
- The President’s House
- Second Bank of the United States
- B. Free Franklin Post Office & Museum
- Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church
- Museum of the American Revolution
- Elfreth’s Alley
- The African American Museum in Philadelphia
- National Constitution Center
- Powel House
- American Philosophical Society Museum
We do not make this stuff up out of thin air. We have spent our adult lives exploring and filming America’s national parks and public lands, working with the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the USDA, and the U.S. Forest Service along the way. In 2018 our father, who spent a career teaching history, joined us to help tell the stories behind these places.
Helpful Related Articles
Historic Sites in Pennsylvania: The Best Historic Sites in Pennsylvania
Revolutionary War Sites: The Best Revolutionary War Sites and Battlefields
Civil War Sites: The Best Civil War Sites and Battlefields
Pennsylvania National Parks: Pennsylvania National Parks Worth Visiting
