Pennsylvania occupies a singular place in American history, culture, and geography. It is the state where the United States was born — where the Declaration of Independence was signed, where the Constitution was written, and where the ideals of American democracy were first given form and language. It is also a state of extraordinary natural beauty, from the Pocono Mountains in the northeast to the Laurel Highlands in the southwest, from the broad farmlands of Lancaster County to the wild, ridge-and-valley terrain of its Appalachian interior. It is home to two of the great American cities — Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — each with a character so distinct from the other that they seem to belong to different states entirely, and between them stretches a middle Pennsylvania of small cities, college towns, historic battlefields, and landscapes of quiet, rolling beauty that rewards the traveler who takes the time to explore it.
Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State, and the name is apt in more ways than one. Geographically, it sits at the center of the original thirteen colonies. Historically, it was the keystone of the new American republic — the state whose compromises, whose intellectual tradition, and whose diverse population made union possible. And for the traveler, it is a keystone destination — a place of extraordinary variety and depth that connects the coastal sophistication of the northeastern United States with the working-class heartland of the American interior, and that offers more layers of history, culture, and natural experience than most visitors ever fully discover.
Why Visit Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania receives over 200 million visitors annually, drawn by a combination of historical significance, natural beauty, cultural attractions, and some of the most distinctive regional food and culture in the United States. The Philadelphia area alone contains more artifacts of early American history than anywhere else in the country. The Pennsylvania Dutch Country of Lancaster County offers a window into one of the most distinctive and enduring alternative communities in the Western world. The battlefields of Gettysburg preserve the landscape of the most consequential battle ever fought in North America. Pittsburgh has reinvented itself from a steel city into one of the most livable and culturally vibrant mid-sized cities in the United States. And the forests, rivers, and mountains of Pennsylvania’s vast interior offer outdoor experiences of genuine quality in a state that is far wilder than its position on the northeastern megalopolis corridor might suggest.
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is the founding city of the United States — the place where American democracy was conceived, debated, and given its definitive written form. It is also one of the great American cities on its own terms, with a world-class museum culture, an outstanding and rapidly evolving restaurant scene, neighborhoods of extraordinary character and beauty, and a civic identity so fierce and particular that it has become part of the cultural fabric of the nation. Philadelphians are proud, passionate, occasionally profane, and deeply attached to their city in a way that is one of the most endearing things about the place.
Historic Philadelphia
Independence National Historical Park, managed by the National Park Service, preserves the most concentrated collection of sites associated with the founding of the United States anywhere in the world. At its center is Independence Hall — the single most important building in American history. It was here that the Second Continental Congress met to debate and adopt the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and here that the Constitutional Convention gathered in 1787 to draft the Constitution of the United States. The building itself is a Georgian masterpiece of red brick and white woodwork, and the Assembly Room where both documents were signed has been restored to its 18th-century appearance with extraordinary care. Tours of the building, led by National Park Service rangers, are among the finest interpretive experiences available at any historical site in the United States. Admission is free, but timed entry passes are required and should be reserved well in advance.
The Liberty Bell, housed in the Liberty Bell Center directly across Chestnut Street from Independence Hall, is the most recognizable symbol of American freedom in the world. The bell, cast in London in 1752 and famously cracked, was used to call the Pennsylvania Assembly together and to mark important public occasions. Its association with the abolitionist movement in the 19th century, when activists adopted it as a symbol of the contradiction between the ideals of American liberty and the reality of slavery, gave it the iconic status it retains today. The center presents the bell in a glass pavilion that allows it to be viewed against the backdrop of Independence Hall — a deliberately composed historical sight line of considerable power.
The surrounding blocks of the park contain numerous other historically significant sites. Congress Hall, where the United States Congress met from 1790 to 1800 while Philadelphia served as the national capital, is one of the finest preserved Federal-period public buildings in existence. The Second Bank of the United States, a magnificent Greek Revival temple designed by William Strickland in 1824, houses a portrait gallery of the founders of the republic. Carpenters Hall, where the First Continental Congress met in 1774, is a beautifully preserved Georgian building operated by the Carpenters Company of Philadelphia — the oldest trade guild in the United States, founded in 1724.
Elfreth’s Alley, a narrow cobblestone lane just north of the park, is the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the United States, with a row of 32 homes dating from 1702 to 1836 that are remarkably well preserved. Walking its brick-paved length, with the small Federal and Georgian houses leaning slightly toward each other overhead, is one of the most direct experiences of early American urban life available anywhere. The nearby Christ Church, where George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Betsy Ross worshipped, is a magnificent Georgian church of 1744 with a graveyard containing the graves of five signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The Museum of the American Revolution, which opened in 2017 on Third Street just blocks from Independence Hall, is the finest museum of its subject in the United States. Its permanent collection and narrative galleries tell the story of the Revolution with intellectual rigor, emotional power, and a willingness to engage with the Revolution’s complications and contradictions — the roles of women, enslaved people, Native Americans, and loyalists alongside the founding narrative of the patriots. The centerpiece of the museum is a theatrical presentation built around George Washington’s field tent, used throughout the Revolutionary War — an object of extraordinary historical resonance.
Old City and Society Hill
The neighborhoods immediately surrounding the historical park are among the most beautiful and historically layered urban districts in the United States. Old City, to the north and east of the park, was the commercial heart of colonial Philadelphia and retains dozens of buildings from the 18th and early 19th centuries alongside galleries, restaurants, and bars that have made it one of Philadelphia’s most active neighborhoods. Society Hill, to the south, is a residential neighborhood of 18th and 19th-century brick rowhouses interspersed with modern infill buildings — including three towers designed by I.M. Pei in the 1960s — that is one of the finest examples of urban historic preservation in the United States.
Center City
Philadelphia’s downtown, known as Center City, was laid out by William Penn in 1682 in a grid plan that was among the most influential urban designs in American history, serving as the template for dozens of subsequent American cities. The plan centered on five public squares, four of which survive as parks, and a central square that is now the site of Philadelphia City Hall — a massive Second Empire building of 1901 that is the largest municipal building in the United States by floor area and is capped by a bronze statue of William Penn that, by a gentleman’s agreement among developers, stood as the tallest point in the Philadelphia skyline until 1987.
Broad Street, running north-south through the center of the city, is Philadelphia’s great ceremonial avenue, lined with cultural institutions and civic buildings. The Avenue of the Arts designation along South Broad Street encompasses the Academy of Music — the oldest continuously operating opera house in the United States, an Italian Renaissance jewel of 1857 that is the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra — the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Wilma Theater, and the Philadelphia Film Center. The Philadelphia Orchestra itself, one of the finest orchestras in the world, has been known since the early 20th century for a lush, warm sound called the Philadelphia Sound that remains one of the great achievements of American classical music.
The Reading Terminal Market, housed in the train shed of the former Reading Railroad terminal at 12th and Arch Streets, is one of the great indoor public markets in the United States — a vast, bustling space where Pennsylvania Dutch vendors from Lancaster County sell scrapple, whoopie pies, shoofly pie, and fresh produce alongside butchers, fishmongers, cheese sellers, spice merchants, and some of the best lunch counters in Philadelphia. The Amish vendors, who appear only on certain days of the week, are among the most popular and authentic attractions in the market.
Rittenhouse Square, the finest of Penn’s original five squares, is the heart of Philadelphia’s most elegant residential neighborhood — a beautifully planted park surrounded by luxury apartment buildings, boutique hotels, and the finest concentration of restaurants in the city. The blocks radiating from the square are lined with brownstone and brick rowhouses, independent shops, and the kind of civilized, walkable urban life that Philadelphia does as well as any American city.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Parkway
The Benjamin Franklin Parkway, modeled after the Champs-Élysées in Paris, sweeps diagonally from City Hall to Fairmount Park and is lined with some of Philadelphia’s finest cultural institutions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, perched at the head of the Parkway on a neoclassical Greek temple of 1928 and immortalized in the popular imagination by the Rocky films — the museum’s front steps are one of the most visited sites in Philadelphia — is one of the great art museums in the United States. Its collection of over 240,000 objects includes outstanding holdings in American art, European painting and decorative arts, Asian art, and one of the most comprehensive collections of armor in the world. The museum’s period rooms — complete architectural interiors transported from their original locations in Europe and Asia — are among the finest in any American museum.
The Barnes Foundation, relocated from its original suburban home to a purpose-built building on the Parkway in 2012, houses one of the most astonishing private art collections ever assembled — 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, and 46 Picassos, along with African sculpture, ironwork, and decorative arts, displayed according to the idiosyncratic but deeply considered installation principles of its founder, Albert C. Barnes, who believed that art should be experienced without labels or hierarchies, in direct visual relationships with other objects. The experience of walking through the Barnes galleries is unlike any other museum experience in the world. The Rodin Museum on the Parkway contains the largest collection of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures outside of Paris, displayed in a beautiful beaux-arts building and garden.
Philadelphia Neighborhoods
Philadelphia’s neighborhoods are one of its greatest assets — a collection of distinct communities, each with its own identity, architecture, food scene, and character, spread across a compact and walkable urban fabric.
Fishtown and Northern Liberties, just north of Old City along the Delaware River waterfront, have been the center of Philadelphia’s creative and culinary renaissance over the past 15 years. The restaurants along Girard Avenue and Frankford Avenue, the bars and music venues of Fishtown, and the independent shops and galleries of Northern Liberties make these two neighborhoods the most dynamic in the city. Frankford Hall, a massive German beer garden in Fishtown, and the outstanding restaurants of East Passyunk Avenue — a diagonal street in South Philadelphia that has become arguably the finest restaurant corridor in the city — represent Philadelphia’s food scene at its most inventive.
South Philadelphia is the old Italian-American neighborhood of the city, home to the Italian Market on 9th Street — the oldest outdoor market in the United States, where vendors have been selling produce, meat, cheese, and fish from open-fronted stalls since the 1880s — and to the cheesesteak stands that have made Philadelphia’s most famous food export a subject of civic passion and endless debate. Pat’s King of Steaks and Geno’s Steaks, facing each other at the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue, have been rivals since 1966 and draw visitors from around the world to eat their cheesesteaks on the sidewalk at all hours.
Germantown, a former independent township incorporated into Philadelphia in 1854, preserves some of the finest colonial-era architecture in the region, including Cliveden — the stone mansion where the Battle of Germantown was fought in 1777 — and a collection of early houses that rival anything in the historic district downtown for authenticity and age.
Fairmount Park, the largest urban park system in the United States by some measures, stretches along both banks of the Schuylkill River from the Art Museum to the northwestern edge of the city and encompasses over 2,000 acres of woods, meadows, historic houses, gardens, and the boathouse row along the Schuylkill that is one of the most picturesque sights in Philadelphia — a line of Victorian boathouses reflected in the river, particularly beautiful when lit at night.
Pennsylvania Dutch Country
Lancaster County, approximately 70 miles west of Philadelphia, is home to one of the most distinctive and enduring communities in North America — the Pennsylvania Dutch, a term that encompasses several Anabaptist religious communities, most notably the Old Order Amish and the Old Order Mennonites, who have maintained a way of life largely unchanged from the 18th century in deliberate rejection of the modern world.
The Amish of Lancaster County — approximately 40,000 people — live without electricity, automobiles, or most modern technology, farming their fields with horses, traveling by horse-drawn buggy, and organizing their community life around their faith in a way that is simultaneously deeply foreign and deeply moving to outside observers. The landscape of Lancaster County is one of the most beautiful farmscapes in the eastern United States — rolling hills of exceptional fertility, red barns and white farmhouses set in fields of corn and tobacco, the roads busy with the clatter of iron-shod hooves on asphalt.
The city of Lancaster itself is a handsome small city with an excellent central market — the Lancaster Central Market, the oldest continuously operating farmers market in the United States, held in a magnificent Romanesque Revival market house of 1889 — and a growing restaurant and arts scene that has transformed it into one of the more interesting small cities in Pennsylvania. The surrounding county contains dozens of small towns and villages of considerable charm, including Lititz — frequently cited as one of the most beautiful small towns in the United States, with a beautifully preserved main street, the Wilbur Chocolate factory and museum, and the Sturgis Pretzel House where the American hard pretzel was invented in 1861.
Visiting Pennsylvania Dutch Country requires sensitivity and respect. The Amish do not seek tourism and do not generally wish to be photographed. Responsible tourism means patronizing Amish-owned businesses — roadside farm stands, quilt shops, and furniture makers — rather than gawking from car windows, and engaging with the community through the excellent interpretive facilities at the Amish Experience at Plain & Fancy Farm and the Mennonite Information Center, which offer context and perspective that make the visit far more meaningful.
The food of Lancaster County is an experience in itself — hearty, unpretentious, and deeply traditional. Shoofly pie, a molasses-based pastry with a crumb topping, is the iconic Pennsylvania Dutch dessert. Scrapple — a loaf of cornmeal and pork scraps seasoned with herbs and pan-fried — is a breakfast staple that divides opinion sharply along regional lines but is a genuine Pennsylvania original. Whoopie pies, soft chocolate cake sandwiches filled with white cream, are sold everywhere and are irresistible. Lebanon bologna, a cured beef sausage made in Lebanon County, is another regional specialty of considerable distinction.
Gettysburg
Gettysburg is one of the most profoundly significant places in American history. It was here, over three days from July 1 to 3, 1863, that the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia fought the largest and bloodiest battle ever waged in North America — a confrontation that resulted in approximately 51,000 casualties, turned the tide of the Civil War, and effectively ended the Confederacy’s ability to wage offensive warfare. It was here also that Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, his 272-word masterpiece of American prose, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in November 1863.
Gettysburg National Military Park encompasses nearly 6,000 acres of battlefield terrain preserved largely as it appeared in 1863, marked by hundreds of monuments erected by the veterans of both sides in the decades following the war. The scale and completeness of the battlefield’s preservation is extraordinary — visitors can drive, cycle, or walk across the actual ground where the battle was fought, stand at the positions held by individual regiments, and understand the tactical geography of the engagement with an immediacy that no museum exhibition can replicate.
The Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center is the essential starting point — its museum galleries tell the story of the Civil War and the Gettysburg campaign with intelligence and depth, and its cyclorama — a massive 360-degree painting of Pickett’s Charge created in 1884, restored to its original dimensions — is one of the most remarkable historical artworks in the United States. Licensed battlefield guides, available through the visitor center, provide an irreplaceable layer of interpretation to the battlefield tour. Little Round Top, the rocky hill whose defense on the second day of battle arguably saved the Union army from destruction, offers views across the battlefield that make the tactical situation viscerally clear. The High Water Mark on Cemetery Ridge, where Pickett’s Charge was repulsed on the third day, is among the most emotionally charged acres in American history.
The town of Gettysburg itself is a pleasant small borough with good restaurants, a handful of excellent small museums including the Shriver House Museum and the David Wills House where Lincoln completed the Gettysburg Address, and an independence of spirit that resists the worst impulses of battlefield tourism. The Soldiers’ National Cemetery, where Lincoln spoke and where the Union dead are buried in carefully ordered semicircular rows, is a place of genuine quiet and solemnity.
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is one of the great American urban reinvention stories. For a century, it was the steel capital of the world — a city of blast furnaces, rolling mills, and rivers of molten metal that made it the industrial engine of the United States and filled its air with smoke so thick that streetlights burned at noon. When the steel industry collapsed in the 1970s and 1980s, Pittsburgh lost a quarter of its population and faced a crisis of identity and purpose that seemed potentially terminal. What has happened since is a model for post-industrial cities everywhere — a transformation driven by the universities, the medical industry, technology, and the arts that has made Pittsburgh one of the most livable, most interesting, and most surprising cities in the United States.
Pittsburgh is defined by its geography — a city of extraordinary drama, built on the hills, bluffs, and river valleys at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which join to form the Ohio River at the Point. The city’s topography, which required the construction of more bridges than any other city in the world except Venice — Pittsburgh has 446 bridges — creates constantly changing perspectives and vistas of genuine beauty.
Downtown and the Point
Point State Park, at the tip of the Golden Triangle where the three rivers meet, is the site of Fort Pitt, the British fortification that succeeded the French Fort Duquesne and whose name became Pittsburgh’s. The fort’s reconstructed blockhouse, the oldest surviving structure in western Pennsylvania, still stands in the park. The fountain at the Point — one of the largest in the world — marks the precise confluence of the rivers and is one of the defining images of Pittsburgh.
The Golden Triangle — Pittsburgh’s downtown, enclosed by the two rivers — contains the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, a magnificent sustainable building by Rafael Viñoly that spans a ravine and is considered one of the finest convention centers in the United States. PPG Place, a complex of six Gothic-inspired glass towers designed by Philip Johnson in 1984, is one of the most striking commercial developments in any American city, its thousands of mirrored glass panes reflecting the surrounding architecture and sky in constantly shifting patterns.
Oakland
Oakland, several miles east of downtown, is Pittsburgh’s cultural and educational center — home to the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the finest concentrations of museums and cultural institutions in any American neighborhood outside Manhattan.
The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, founded by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie as his philanthropic gift to the city, occupy a magnificent Beaux-Arts complex in the heart of Oakland. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History contains one of the finest dinosaur fossil collections in the world — Carnegie himself financed the expeditions that uncovered the specimens, and the Dinosaur Hall is a landmark of natural history museum design. The Carnegie Museum of Art, in the same building, has an outstanding collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, decorative arts, and a superb collection of architectural casts. The Carnegie Science Center on the North Shore, with its planetarium and interactive exhibitions, is one of the finest science museums in the region.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning — a 42-story Gothic Revival tower completed in 1937 — is one of the most extraordinary academic buildings in the United States. Its Commons Room, the largest Gothic interior in the Western Hemisphere, is open to the public, and the building’s remarkable Nationality Rooms — 31 classrooms decorated in the traditional styles of the cultures that contributed to Pittsburgh’s immigrant population — are a UNESCO Creative City of Design landmark and one of the most unusual and moving cultural experiences in Pittsburgh.
The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, adjacent to the Carnegie complex in Schenley Park, is one of the finest Victorian glass conservatories in the United States — a magnificent iron and glass structure of 1893 surrounded by gardens that are beautiful in every season and extraordinary during the holiday flower shows.
The Neighborhoods
Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods are the heart of the city’s character — a collection of distinct communities perched on hillsides and nestled in river valleys, connected by the famous inclines that carry passengers up the steep slopes of Mount Washington and offer the finest views of the city.
The Duquesne Incline and Monongahela Incline, both more than 140 years old and both still in daily operation, carry passengers from the South Side up the face of Mount Washington — and the view from the top, looking down across the Golden Triangle to the confluence of the three rivers, is one of the finest urban panoramas in the United States. At night, with the downtown towers reflected in the rivers below, it is one of the most beautiful city views in America.
The Strip District, along the Allegheny River just east of downtown, was the city’s wholesale produce and food distribution center for over a century and retains that character in the most wonderful way — a long corridor of food merchants, produce stalls, ethnic grocery stores, restaurants, and bars that is at its most vibrant on Saturday mornings, when the sidewalks overflow with shoppers and the air fills with the smells of coffee, fresh bread, and kielbasa from the Polish and Eastern European butchers that remain a Pittsburgh institution.
Lawrenceville, stretching along Butler Street north of the Strip District, has been the center of Pittsburgh’s creative renaissance — a working-class neighborhood of brick rowhouses that has attracted artists, chefs, and entrepreneurs to create one of the most dynamic restaurant and bar scenes in the city, including the outstanding Cure restaurant and the remarkable modernist building of the Union Project.
Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, affluent residential neighborhoods east of Oakland, are Pittsburgh’s most elegant and commercially sophisticated areas, with outstanding independent bookshops, specialty food stores, and restaurants lining Walnut Street and Murray Avenue.
The North Shore, across the Allegheny from downtown, is home to PNC Park — widely regarded as the most beautiful baseball stadium in the United States, its open concourse framing extraordinary views of the Pittsburgh skyline and the Roberto Clemente Bridge — and Acrisure Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the most storied franchises in professional football.
Andy Warhol and Pittsburgh’s Arts Scene
Pittsburgh’s most famous artistic son is Andy Warhol, born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928, the son of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant parents. The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Shore is the most comprehensive single-artist museum in the world — seven floors of Warhol’s paintings, drawings, films, photographs, and archival materials in a former warehouse building that does full justice to the breadth, wit, and strange depth of his achievement. The collection includes major paintings from every phase of his career, his extraordinary time capsule boxes, his film archive, and personal memorabilia that illuminate the journey from working-class Pittsburgh to the Factory and global celebrity.
Pittsburgh’s arts scene extends well beyond the Warhol. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, based in Heinz Hall, is one of the finest orchestras in the United States. The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and Pittsburgh Opera are important regional companies. The city’s gallery scene, concentrated in the cultural district downtown and in the neighborhoods of Lawrenceville and East Liberty, is active and growing.
The Pocono Mountains
The Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania have been a resort destination for over 150 years, drawing visitors from New York City and Philadelphia to their lakes, forests, and — in winter — ski slopes. The Poconos are not dramatically high mountains by any standard, but they offer an accessible natural escape from the urban corridor that is a significant part of their enduring appeal.
Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, on the New Jersey border at the southern end of the Poconos, preserves a remarkable stretch of the Delaware River as it cuts through the Kittatinny Ridge in one of the most scenic river gaps in the eastern United States. The Appalachian Trail traverses the ridge above the gap for miles, and the river is outstanding for canoeing, kayaking, and fishing. Dingmans Falls and Silverthread Falls, accessible by short trails within the recreation area, are among the finest waterfalls in Pennsylvania.
Jim Thorpe, a small borough at the southern gateway to the Poconos named for the legendary Native American athlete, is one of the most surprisingly beautiful small towns in Pennsylvania — its Victorian architecture intact and well preserved, its steep streets climbing the hillside above the Lehigh River gorge. The Lehigh Gorge, carved deeply into the surrounding plateau by the Lehigh River, is one of the finest whitewater rivers in the East and is accessible by trail and bicycle from Jim Thorpe.
The Laurel Highlands
The Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Mountains southeast of Pittsburgh, are home to some of the most spectacular natural scenery in the state and to one of the greatest works of American architecture.
Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1939 for the Kaufmann department store family of Pittsburgh, is widely considered the finest work of residential architecture in the United States and one of the masterpieces of 20th-century architecture anywhere in the world. The house is built over a waterfall on Bear Run — its cantilevered concrete terraces extending dramatically over the rushing stream below — in a synthesis of architecture and natural site so complete that the two seem inseparable. The American Institute of Architects has twice named it the best all-time work of American architecture. Tours of the house, which must be reserved well in advance, are offered at various levels of access, and the experience of walking through the rooms and standing on the terraces above the waterfall is one of the most genuinely thrilling architectural experiences available anywhere.
Ohiopyle State Park, surrounding Fallingwater in the Youghiogheny River gorge, is one of Pennsylvania’s finest natural areas — a rugged, forested gorge where the Youghiogheny River provides some of the best whitewater rafting in the eastern United States, ranging from gentle family floats to challenging Class IV rapids. The Ferncliff Peninsula, where the river makes a dramatic horseshoe bend, is a National Natural Landmark protecting a remarkable assemblage of wildflowers and unusual plant communities.
Kentuck Knob, another Frank Lloyd Wright house just a few miles from Fallingwater, is less celebrated but equally interesting — a low, hexagonal Usonian house of 1956 set on a wooded hillside with a sculpture park containing significant works by artists including Andy Goldsworthy, whose stone walls wind through the surrounding forest.
Fort Necessity National Battlefield nearby preserves the site of George Washington’s first military engagement — a skirmish in 1754 that was a precursor to the French and Indian War and that set in motion a chain of events leading ultimately to American independence.
Central Pennsylvania and State College
The center of Pennsylvania is a world of ridge-and-valley Appalachian terrain, small cities, and the flagship campus of Penn State University — one of the largest universities in the United States.
State College, home to Penn State’s main campus at University Park, is a quintessential American college town — dominated by the university, alive with energy during the academic year, and the site of Beaver Stadium, one of the largest stadiums in the world, which fills with over 106,000 passionate fans on autumn football Saturdays in scenes of extraordinary spectacle. The Palmer Museum of Art on campus is an excellent university art museum with a surprisingly strong collection.
The Pennsylvania Grand Canyon — Pine Creek Gorge in Tioga County — is the most dramatic natural landscape in the state, a gorge carved 1,000 feet deep into the Allegheny Plateau by Pine Creek. The views from Leonard Harrison State Park on the eastern rim and Colton Point State Park on the western rim are genuinely stunning, and the Pine Creek Rail Trail along the gorge floor follows the route of the former railroad through one of the finest long-distance cycling routes in Pennsylvania.
Harrisburg, the state capital, sits on the Susquehanna River at the center of Pennsylvania and is a city of genuine historical importance. The Pennsylvania State Capitol building, completed in 1906, is one of the finest state capitol buildings in the United States — its dome modeled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, its interior decorated with mosaics and murals of extraordinary quality by the artist Edwin Austin Abbey.
The Pennsylvania Wilds and Northern Pennsylvania
The northern tier of Pennsylvania is one of the most underdeveloped and least visited parts of the state — a vast plateau of state forest, wild rivers, and small communities with a genuine frontier quality that distinguishes it sharply from the densely populated corridor to the south.
Elk County is home to the largest free-roaming elk herd in the eastern United States — approximately 1,400 animals that are regularly visible in the meadows around the town of Benezette, particularly at dawn and dusk during the fall rut, when the bulls bugle across the valleys in one of the most dramatically wild sounds available anywhere in the eastern United States. The Pennsylvania Elk Viewing Area outside Benezette is the primary observation point, and autumn weekends draw wildlife enthusiasts from across the region.
The Pine Creek Gorge, Kettle Creek, and the First Fork Sinnemahoning are outstanding trout fishing streams in a region of forests and ridges that receives relatively few visitors and rewards those who seek it out with a sense of genuine remoteness.
Practical Travel Information
Getting Around
Pennsylvania is easily traversable by car. The Pennsylvania Turnpike — one of the oldest limited-access highways in the United States, opened in 1940 — runs across the state from the New Jersey border to Ohio, connecting Philadelphia with Pittsburgh in approximately five hours under normal conditions. Interstate 81 runs north-south through the center of the state. Amtrak connects Philadelphia and Pittsburgh via the Pennsylvanian train once daily, a journey of roughly seven hours through the Appalachian landscape that is one of the more scenic rail journeys in the eastern United States. Philadelphia is also served by Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, connecting it to New York City in approximately one hour and fifteen minutes and to Washington, D.C. in approximately two hours.
Within Philadelphia, the SEPTA transit system operates subways, trolleys, and buses serving the city and surrounding region. Pittsburgh’s Port Authority operates a light rail system and extensive bus network.
Best Time to Visit
Pennsylvania is a year-round destination, but the finest seasons are spring and fall. Spring brings wildflowers to the state forests, the flowering of the orchards in Adams and Lancaster Counties, and the renewal of the cities after winter. Fall foliage is excellent throughout the state, typically peaking in the northern tier in late September and in the Laurel Highlands and central regions in mid-October. Summer is warm and occasionally humid but is peak season for outdoor recreation — hiking, paddling, and cycling in the state forests and parks. Winter brings skiing to the Poconos and Laurel Highlands and a particular beauty to the farmscapes of Lancaster County under snow.
Food and Drink
Pennsylvania’s food culture is one of the most distinctive in the United States. Beyond the Philadelphia cheesesteak and the Pennsylvania Dutch traditions of Lancaster County, the state has a rich food heritage rooted in its immigrant communities. Pierogies — the Polish filled pasta dumplings that became a Pittsburgh staple through the city’s Eastern European immigrant communities — are as fundamental to Pittsburgh’s food identity as the cheesesteak is to Philadelphia’s. Soft pretzels, rooted in the Pennsylvania German tradition and sold from street carts throughout Philadelphia, are another essential Pennsylvania food experience.
Pennsylvania is also a significant wine and craft brewing state. The Finger Lakes reach into the state’s northern border, and the Lake Erie Wine Region in Erie County produces excellent cool-climate wines. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh both have outstanding and rapidly growing craft brewing scenes — Philadelphia in particular has become one of the finest craft beer cities in the United States.
A Few Final Thoughts
Pennsylvania rewards the traveler who moves slowly and pays attention to what is around them. The famous destinations — Independence Hall, Gettysburg, Fallingwater, Niagara — are genuinely extraordinary, and no visitor should miss them. But some of the finest experiences Pennsylvania offers are quieter and less celebrated: the drive through the farms of Lancaster County on a September morning, the walk along the Lehigh Gorge as the leaves turn, the view from Mount Washington over Pittsburgh at night, the stillness of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon at dawn, the taste of a soft pretzel warm from a street cart on Market Street in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania gave the United States its founding documents, its philosophical framework, and in many ways its sense of national possibility. Spending real time in this deep, various, and endlessly interesting state is a way of understanding those gifts more fully — and of finding, in its landscapes and communities, the America that the founders imagined and that travelers still come seeking.
