27 Best Sights in Parkway Museum District and Fairmount Park, Philadelphia

Nearly sequestered from public view for a century in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, this legendary collection of 19th- and 20th-century masterpieces made world headlines when it relocated to this spectacular new home in May 2012. While the statistics are impressive—81 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 7 Van Goghs, 6 Seurats (and many more)—almost more inspiring is this soaring marble-and-glass museum. Largely thanks to a brilliant modernist setting, the greatness of this collection of art is only now revealed, due to a new design that lends a sense of intimacy between viewer and object, while at the same time increasing one's appreciation of capital-A art.

The collection was amassed (in the 1920s and 1930s) thanks to the millions Dr. Albert C. Barnes made in pharmaceuticals. As a theorist, he wanted to help people "see as an artist saw" and to do this, he created for each gallery wall an "ensemble" of mirror-like symmetry: a Matisse could hang side-by-side with a Goya, above an African sculpture, and below a Old Master sketch and a French tin shoe buckle. As his will decreed that nothing could be changed, everything had to be transported—lock, stock, and Modigliani—to this new showcase.

Warmed by walls of tawny-colored Negev sandstone, centered around an enormous "Light Court"—the perfect place for gallery-goers to reflect on art—and entered through a narrow "mood tube" of reflecting pools and tall trees, the design of architects Tod Williams and Billy Tsien may be minimalist in style but remains mellow in impact. Inside, an interior garden, art library, restaurant, two classrooms, and café are winningly used as buffer zones to the rooms hung with the core collection.

Highlights include some of the most fabled paintings of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modern art, including Cézanne's The Card Players, Georges Seurat's Models, Van Gogh's Postman Roulin, Monet's Studio Boat, Matisse's Joy of Life and La Danse mural, Renoir's The Artist's Family, and Picasso's Acrobat and Young Harlequin. Thanks to a new lighting system, the art looks so fresh that it seems the artists had just put down their palettes. It is safe to say that most museum-goers will find this new Barnes Foundation a work of art in itself. For information about the museum's packed calendar of classes, lectures, and concerts, see the website. It's wise to make a reservation in advance.

These architecturally varied, quaint-looking 19th-century buildings—city icons built in Victorian Gothic, Gothic Revival, and Italianate styles—are home to the rowing clubs that make up the Schuylkill Navy, an association of boating clubs organized in 1858. These clubs host various races, including the Dad Vail Regatta and the Head of the Schuylkill. The view of the boathouses from the west side of the river is splendid—especially at night, when they're outlined with hundreds of small lights. Lloyd Hall, at 1 Boathouse Row, is a public recreation center with a gymnasium, bicycle rentals in season, and a café.

The city's premier cultural attraction is one of the country's leading museums. One of the greatest treasures of the museum is the building itself. Constructed in 1928 of Minnesota dolomite, it's modeled after ancient Greek temples but on a grander scale. The museum was designed by Julian Francis Abele, the first African-American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture. You can enter the museum from the front or the rear; choose the front and you can run up the 99 steps made famous in the movie Rocky.

Once inside, you'll see the grand staircase and Saint-Gaudens's statue Diana; she formerly graced New York's old Madison Square Garden. The museum has several outstanding permanent collections: the John G. Johnson Collection covers Western art from the Renaissance to the 19th century; the Arensberg and A. E. Gallatin collections contain modern and contemporary works by artists such as Brancusi, Braque, Matisse, and Picasso. Famous paintings in these collections include Van Eyck's St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Rubens's Prometheus Bound, Benjamin West's Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, van Gogh's Sunflowers, Cézanne's The Large Bathers, and Picasso's Three Musicians. The museum has the world's most extensive collection of works by Marcel Duchamp, including the world-famous Nude Descending a Staircase and The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Among the American art worth seeking out is a fine selection of works by 19th-century Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins, including The Gross Clinic, which the museum co-owns with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Perhaps the most spectacular objects in the museum are entire structures and great rooms moved lock, stock, and barrel from around the world: a 12th-century French cloister, a 16th-century Indian temple hall, a 16th-century Japanese Buddhist temple, a 17th-century Chinese palace hall, and a Japanese ceremonial teahouse. Among the other collections are costumes, Early American furniture, and Amish and Shaker crafts. An unusual touch—and one that children especially like—is the Kienbusch Collection of Arms and Armor.

The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, across the street in the former Reliance Standard Life Insurance Building, is home to the museum's permanent collection of photography, costume, and contemporary design.

Friday evenings feature live jazz and world music performances in the Great Hall. The museum has a fine restaurant and a surprisingly good cafeteria now under the management of well-known restaurateur Stephen Starr. A short stroll away is the Fairmount Waterworks and Boathouse Row, as well as a path well used by bikers and joggers that connects the museum to Center City's Fitler Square neighborhood.

This jewel of a museum holds the biggest collection outside France of the work of sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). Occupying a 20th-century building designed by French architects Jacques Greber and Paul Cret, it reopened in June 2012 after a brief closing for interior renovations; the idea is to honor Cret's original idea that inside and out offer a "unified setting" for the presentation of sculpture. Entering the museum, you pass through a re-landscaped courtyard to reach Rodin's Gates of Hell—a 21-foot-high sculpture with more than 100 human and animal figures. In the exhibition hall, the sculptor's masterworks are made even more striking by the use of light and shadow. Here are The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and Eternal Springtime. A small room is devoted to one of Rodin's most famous sitters, the French novelist Balzac. Photographs by Edward Steichen showing Rodin at work round out the collection.

This replica of a 16th-century guesthouse was reassembled here in 1958 after being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The architectural setting and the waterfall, gardens, Japanese trees, and pond are a serene contrast with the busy city. The house is called Shofu-So, which means "pine breeze villa," and has a roof made of the bark of the hinoki, a cypress that grows only in the mountains of Japan. There's also 20 murals by acclaimed Japanese contemporary artist Hiroshi Senju here, as well as monthly tea ceremonies, for which reservations are required.

Founded more than 175 years ago to honor Benjamin Franklin, this science museum is as clever as its namesake, thanks to an abundance of dazzling hands-on exhibits. To make the best use of your time, study the floor plan before exploring. You can sit in the cockpit of a T-33 jet trainer, trace the route of a corpuscle through the world's largest artificial heart (15,000 times life size), and ride to nowhere on a 350-ton Baldwin steam locomotive. Most visitors flock to a pair of exhibitions: Electricity, which focuses on sustainable energy and includes Franklin's famous lightning rod; and Changing Earth. One don't-miss is the 30-ton white-marble statue of Franklin; you can see the likeness (and an accompanying hourly multimedia presentation) without paying admission.

The Franklin Air Show celebrates powered flight with the Wright Model B Flyer. The Sports Zone conveys the physics, physiology, and material science behind your favorite sport by simulating surfing, testing your center of mass and reaction time, and more. The Fels Planetarium—which has a state-of-the-art aluminum dome, lighting and sound systems, and a related astronomy exhibit, "Space Command"—has shows about the stars, space exploration, comets, and other phenomena. The Tuttleman IMAX Theater, with a 79-foot domed screen and a 56-speaker sound system, screens recent Hollywood films and special documentaries.

The dioramas of animals from around the world displayed in their natural habitats give this natural history museum an old-fashioned charm. The most popular attraction is Dinosaur Hall, with reconstructed skeletons of a Tyrannosaurus rex and some 30 others of its ilk, as well as the "Big Dig," where you can hunt for real fossils, and "Outside-In," an interactive area where kids can crawl through a log, investigate a real beehive, and touch a legless lizard. Another draw is "Butterflies!," where colorful, winged creatures take flight in a tropical garden setting. Founded in 1812, the academy is considered the oldest science-research institution in the western hemisphere and a world leader in the fields of natural-science research, education, and exhibition; the present building dates from 1876. That history is celebrated in the Ewell Sale Stewart Library, a trove natural-history books and artworks.

Belmont Plateau has a view from 243 feet above river level, which will literally be the high point of a tour of Fairmount Park. In front of you are the park, the Schuylkill River winding down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and, 4 miles away, the Philadelphia skyline.

The basilica of the archdiocese of Philadelphia is the spiritual center for the Philadelphia area's 1.4 million Roman Catholics. Topped by a huge copper dome, it was built between 1846 and 1864 in the Italian Renaissance style. Many of the interior decorations are by Constantino Brumidi, who painted the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Several Philadelphia bishops and archbishops are buried beneath the altar.

Five styles of furniture—Jacobean, William and Mary, Queen Anne, Chippendale, and Federal—reflect the accumulations of five generations of the Paschall-Morris family; additions and changes to the house itself, built 1748–50, reveal changing tastes. The stone house stood in Frankford, in northeastern Philadelphia, before being moved to this location in 1927.

Designed by John Haviland and built in 1829, Eastern State was at the time the most expensive building in America; this massive structure influenced international penal design and was the model for some 300 prisons from China to South America. Its system of solitary confinement (to encourage reflection and penitence) and firm discipline was ultimately recognized as flawed. Before it closed in 1971, the now-crumbling, atmospheric prison was home to Al Capone, Willie Sutton, and Pep the Dog, who allegedly killed the cat that belonged to a governor's wife. The excellent audio tour of the prison features narration by actor Steve Buscemi, and some thoughtful exhibits examine issues relating to criminal justice reform. You can also take a guided tour; check online in advance. The penitentiary, just a half mile north of the Rodin Museum, hosts changing art installations and Terror Behind the Walls, a very popular group of haunted house experiences, around Halloween. At this writing, work was beginning on a new visitor center, but the site is still open. Also, most areas you visit are unheated, so bundle up well in winter.

Bronze and granite sculptures by 16 artists stand in a series of tableaux and groupings on riverside terraces. Portraying American themes and traits, they include The Quaker, by Harry Rosen; Birth of a Nation, by Henry Kreis; and Spirit of Enterprise, by Jacques Lipchitz.

Designed by Frederick Graff, this National Historic Landmark completed in 1815 was the first steam-pumping station of its kind in the country, and the notable assemblage of Greek Revival buildings is one of the city's most beautiful sights. The buildings, just behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, include an interpretive center with some original features on display and kid-friendly exhibits about the region's water and the history of the water works; there's also a short film. Nearby paths provide good views of it and the Art Museum.

Philadelphia calls its vast public-library system the Fabulous Freebie. Founded in 1891, the central library has more than 1 million volumes. With its grand entrance hall, sweeping marble staircase, and enormous reading rooms, this Greek Revival building looks the way libraries should. It's also the site of regular author readings and other book-related fairs and events. With more than 12,000 musical scores, the Edwin S. Fleisher collection is the largest of its kind in the world. The department of social science and history has nearly 100,000 charts, maps, and guidebooks. The rare-book department is a beautiful suite housing first editions of Dickens, ancient Sumerian clay tablets, illuminated medieval manuscripts, and more modern manuscripts, including the only known handwritten copy of Poe's "The Raven." The children's department houses the city's largest collection of children's books in a made-for-kids setting. The library is in the midst of renovations in preparation for a 130,000-square-foot addition designed by acclaimed architect Moshe Safdie that will house a new children's department, an area for teens, a self-publishing center, exhibition galleries, and a 550-seat auditorium.

On the Horticulture Center's 27 wooded acres are a butterfly garden, a greenhouse where plants and flowers used on city property are grown, and a pavilion in the trees for bird-watching from the woodland canopy. Don't miss the whimsical Seaweed Girl fountain in the display house. The center stands on the site of the 1876 Centennial Exposition's Horticultural Hall.

John Notman, architect of the Athenaeum and many other noted local buildings, designed Laurel Hill in 1836; it is an important example of an early rural burial ground and the first cemetery in America designed by an architect. Its hills overlooking the Schuylkill River, its rare trees, and its monuments and mausoleums sculpted by Alexander Milne Calder, Alexander Stirling Calder, William Strickland, and Thomas U. Walter made it a popular picnic spot in the 19th century; today it's a great place to stroll or bike, take a guided tour (fee), or download an app for a self-guided tour. Among the notables buried in this 78-acre necropolis are General George Meade and 39 other Civil War–era generals. Burials still take place here.

Built around 1767, this Georgian house on a laurel-covered hill overlooking the Schuylkill River once belonged to Dr. Philip Syng Physick (also owner of Society Hill's Physick House). The house furnishings are from a variety of periods. On some Sunday evenings in summer, Women for Greater Philadelphia sponsors candlelight chamber music concerts here; there are other events, too. Call before visiting.

An impressive example of a Federal-style country house, Lemon Hill was built in 1800 on a 350-acre farm. Its most distinctive features are oval parlors with concave doors and the entrance hall's checkerboard floor of Valley Forge marble.

One of William Penn's five squares, Logan Circle was originally a burying ground and the site of a public execution by hanging in 1823. It found a fate better than death, though. In 1825 the square was named for James Logan, Penn's secretary; it later became a circle and is now one of the city's gems. The focal point of Logan Circle is the Swann Fountain of 1920, designed by Alexander Stirling Calder, son of Alexander Milne Calder, who created the William Penn statue atop City Hall. You can find many works by a third generation of the family, noted modern sculptor Alexander Calder, the mobile- and stabile-maker, in the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art. The main figures in the fountain symbolize Philadelphia's three leading waterways: the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers and Wissahickon Creek. Around Logan Circle are some examples of Philadelphia's magnificent collection of outdoor art, including General Galusha Pennypacker, the Shakespeare Memorial (Hamlet and the Fool, by Alexander Stirling Calder), and Jesus Breaking Bread.

Built in 1761 by John Macpherson, a Scottish sea captain, Mount Pleasant is one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the country. The level of craftsmanship in the rooms, including architectural carvings, is high, and the historically accurate furnishings are culled from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's noted collection of Philadelphia Chippendale furniture.

Opened in 1874, America's first zoo is home to more than 2,000 animals representing six continents. It's small and well landscaped enough to feel pleasantly intimate, and the naturalistic habitats allow you to get close enough to hear the animals breathe. The Amphibian and Reptile House houses 87 species, from 15-foot-long snakes to frogs the size of a dime. The 2½-acre Primate Reserve is home to 11 species from around the world. Notable attractions include Big Cat Falls, where you'll find leopards, jaguars, mountain lions, tigers, and lions; the McNeil Avian Center, the state-of-the-art nest for some 100 birds; and African Plains, stomping ground of giraffes and zebras. The new children's zoo, KidZooU, has a goat bridge, where kids can test their climbing skills against live goats, a duck pond, an outdoor grooming area, a butterfly habitat, and more. You can get a bird's-eye view of the zoo and Fairmount Park on the Channel 6 Zooballoon, a 30-passenger helium balloon anchored by a high-tensile-steel cable.

Philadelphia's children's museum occupies one of the city's most stately buildings, a gorgeous example of Beaux Arts–style architecture constructed for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition and one of just two public buildings still standing from the event. The facility, which is aimed at children seven and younger, instills a sense of wonder from the get-go, with its marble-floored Hamilton Hall, which has an 80-foot-high ceiling and a 40-foot-tall sculpture of the torch of the Statue of Liberty as its centerpiece. (The real statue's torch was displayed here for the nation's 100th birthday celebration.) The 38,000-square-foot facility is set up as six engaging exhibits, plus three areas designed for toddlers, where kids can learn through hands-on play at a mock supermarket, a hospital area, a space gallery with a rocket-making station, Alice's Wonderland, and a theater with interactive performances. Children can climb aboard with an interactive exhibit based on the railroad, or head outside to explore the Imagination Playground or Please Touch Garden. Another highlight is a circa-1908 Dentzel Carousel ride with 52 gleaming and colorful horses, pigs, cats, and rabbits that's housed in an adjacent, enclosed glass pavilion; separate tickets can be purchased for carousel rides. There also is a café serving lunch items and snacks.

This formerly run-down park marking the city's connections with Florence, Italy; Tel Aviv, Israel; and eight other "sister cities" has been transformed to better suit its prime location near Logan Circle, the Four Seasons Hotel, and the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. The park now features a year-round café, plaza, and fountain and an extensive play area for kids inspired by the local Wissahickon watershed that features a rock-climbing area, discovery garden, and sailboat pond.

Built between 1897 and 1912 with funds donated by wealthy foundry owner Richard Smith, the memorial honors Pennsylvania heroes of the Civil War. Among those immortalized in bronze are generals Meade and Hancock—and Smith himself. At the base of each tower is a curved wall with a bench. If you sit at one end and listen to a person whispering at the other end, you can understand why they're called the Whispering Benches. Unfortunately, litter is a constant problem here.

Founded in 1899, this beloved facility has been completely refurbished in recent years with state-of-the-art, age-specific equipment; the centerpiece of the 6½-acre site is the Ann Newman Giant Wooden Slide, which measures 40 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 10 feet tall, and can accommodate up to 12 children at a time.

The largest of the Fairmount Park Historic Mansions underwent major structural repairs in 2012, including restoration of the original windows, updated wiring, and the addition of an eco-friendly, geothermal, climate-control system. It has furniture from the three main phases of its history: Federal, Regency, and Empire. In the parlor is a collection of rare Tucker and Hemphill porcelain; it also showcases a large collection of fine antique dolls and toys.

The Naomi Wood collection of antique household goods, including Colonial furniture, unusual clocks, and English delftware, and designated her "colonial household gear" in her will, can be seen on guided tours in this fine Georgian mansion, a National Historic Landmark built about 1756.