Start from 34 curated places around Bethlehem, PA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Bolete Restaurant
Bethlehem's most acclaimed farm-to-table restaurant in a converted farmhouse outside the city, where Chef Lee Chizmar builds seasonal menus around the kitchen's own garden and relationships with Lehigh Valley farms. The cooking is technically serious and the dining room has the warmth of a place that exists because someone genuinely loves doing it this way.
Apollo Grill
A downtown Bethlehem bistro just off Main Street on West Broad, a consistent quality anchor for well over a decade, with a New American menu that leans on seasonal ingredients and a commitment to executing each dish well rather than overcomplicating the menu. The comfortable room and attentive service make it one of the most reliably rated restaurants in the city.
Trails & outdoors
D&L Trail — Bethlehem Section
The Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor trail passes directly through the SteelStacks campus, connecting Bethlehem's industrial heritage to the broader 165-mile trail system linking Wilkes-Barre and Bristol along the historic Lehigh and Delaware Canals. The Bethlehem section combines industrial history with river scenery along the Lehigh.
South Mountain Trails — Bethlehem
A network of trails on the wooded ridge south of Bethlehem and Lehigh University, accessible from multiple campus and neighborhood trailheads, providing views over the city and the Lehigh Valley from a modest but genuine elevation. The trails connect to the Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center trail system for longer outings.
Things to do
Musikfest
The largest non-gated, free outdoor music festival in the United States, running 10 days each summer across multiple stages at SteelStacks on the Southside and the historic Moravian District downtown. Over 500 performances span classical to country to international to headliner rock across a festival that draws roughly a million visitors while remaining free on most stages.
ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks
Year-round arts programming at the SteelStacks campus covering independent film, gallery exhibitions, live music in the Musikfest Café, and the Blast Furnace Blues series. The center operates as a genuine community cultural hub rather than a Musikfest afterthought — there's something happening here most weekends.
Landmarks & sights
SteelStacks
A 10-acre arts and events campus built in the shadow of five decommissioned Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces — the most dramatic industrial backdrop of any cultural venue in Pennsylvania. ArtsQuest Center hosts year-round concerts, film screenings, and gallery exhibitions while the outdoor amphitheater and Hoover-Mason Trestle elevated walkway make the industrial ruins the centerpiece of the experience.
Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites
A collection of 18th-century Moravian-built structures in Bethlehem's historic north side, including the 1741 Gemeinhaus, the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem, Apothecary, Sun Inn, and the Tannery — a cluster of colonial-era buildings that earned World Heritage status in 2024 as part of the Moravian Church Settlements designation. The settlement is the best-preserved Moravian planned community in the Western Hemisphere.