The Best Museums in Philadelphia

One of the largest art museums in the country, its 200-plus galleries hold masterworks by Van Gogh, Picasso, Duchamp and Cezanne alongside a Japanese teahouse and suits of armor. The grand Beaux-Arts building crowning the Parkway is as much a draw as the art inside, right down to the famous stone steps out front.

Chemist Albert Barnes assembled a staggering trove of Impressionist and Modernist paintings and arranged them by color and form rather than chronology, mingling European canvases with African masks and ironwork. The unconventional, densely packed galleries make it one of the most distinctive art experiences in America.

Named for Benjamin Franklin, this sprawling science center rewards curiosity with interactive exhibits on the brain, electricity, space and flight. Kids and adults alike line up to stroll through the two-story walk-through heart and marvel at the towering marble Franklin memorial in the rotunda.

Designed entirely around play, this children's museum fills the historic Memorial Hall with interactive worlds where little ones can shop a pretend supermarket, pilot a SEPTA bus and splash at water tables. A restored 1908 carousel and constant programming keep families coming back.

Once the most famous and expensive prison in the world, this hauntingly beautiful ruin pioneered the idea of solitary confinement and reform. Visitors wander the eerie cellblocks with an atmospheric audio tour, and each fall the site transforms into a notorious haunted attraction.

Run by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, this gloriously macabre museum displays antique medical instruments, preserved organs and curiosities like slices of Einstein's brain and the conjoined liver of Chang and Eng Bunker. It is equal parts fascinating and unsettling, and unlike anything else in the city.

Just steps from Independence Hall, this interactive museum brings the nation's founding document to life through high-tech exhibits, a stirring live theater production and a hall of life-size bronze statues of the signers. A newly expanded founding gallery makes it a timely stop for the country's 250th anniversary.

This intimate Beaux-Arts jewel box on the Parkway holds bronzes and plasters by Auguste Rodin, the father of modern sculpture, including a cast of The Thinker at its gates. Admission is pay-what-you-wish, making a quiet hour with The Burghers of Calais and The Gates of Hell an easy pleasure.

The University of Pennsylvania's museum of archaeology and anthropology guards more than a million artifacts drawn from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia and beyond. Standouts include the monumental granite sphinx, real mummies and a soaring Chinese rotunda that transports visitors across millennia.

Founded in 1976, this Old City institution tells the story of African American life, art and achievement through rotating exhibitions and its core 'Audacious Freedom' experience on Philadelphia's early Black community. Its accessible galleries make centuries of history both moving and immediate.

Perched on the Penn's Landing waterfront, this museum explores the region's deep ties to rivers and the sea through interactive galleries and boat-building demonstrations. Admission includes climbing aboard the Cruiser Olympia, the oldest floating steel warship in the world, and the WWII submarine Becuna.

This immersive Old City museum recounts the full sweep of the Revolution through weapons, art, interactive theaters and thousands of period artifacts. Its centerpiece is the very tent Washington used as his field command, revealed in a dramatic short presentation.