Start from 151 curated places around Philadelphia, PA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Zahav
Michael Solomonov's Society Hill Israeli restaurant — James Beard Outstanding Restaurant 2019 and the single most influential opening in modern Philly dining. The tasting menu walks Israeli home cooking through laffa, salatim, and hearth-roasted meats.
Laser Wolf
Israeli shipudiya (skewer house) from the Zahav team in Kensington — smoky charred meats, a free salatim parade as the opener, all-included format. The casual sibling to Zahav and arguably more fun.
Trails & outdoors
Wissahickon Valley Park
A 2,000-acre forested gorge running northwest from the city — 50 miles of trails along Wissahickon Creek, the country's only urban-park covered bridge still standing, and a flat-or-strenuous menu depending on which color blaze you follow. Forbidden Drive is the gravel main artery; the Orange Trail is the rougher creekside scramble.
Forbidden Drive
The flat 5.3-mile crushed-stone artery through Wissahickon Valley Park — wide enough for bikes, strollers, dogs, and the running-club traffic. The locals' default walk, and the PA Trail of the Year 2018.
Things to do
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Parkway's anchor museum — Cézanne, Duchamp, Eakins, Rodin, a Frank Gehry-designed interior renovation, and the steps Rocky ran up. The collection is dense enough for a full day; the Asian galleries alone justify the trip.
Barnes Foundation
The most idiosyncratic art museum in America — Dr. Albert Barnes' private collection (more Cézannes than all of France, 181 Renoirs, 69 Matisses) hung in 'ensembles' he designed himself, mixed with African masks, Pennsylvania Dutch ironwork, and 17th-century chairs. Has to be seen to be believed.
Landmarks & sights
Independence Hall
The two-room Georgian brick building where the Declaration of Independence was debated and signed and the Constitution was hammered out — the actual rooms, with the actual chairs. UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most consequential interior in American history.
Liberty Bell Center
The Liberty Bell in its glass-walled pavilion across the lawn from Independence Hall, with the crack and the inscription perfectly framed by the skyline behind. Free, no ticket, and surprisingly powerful once you read the panel about its adoption as an abolitionist symbol.