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Few American cities carry their history as visibly as Philadelphia. The cracked bell in its glass pavilion on Market Street, the Georgian brick of Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both debated and signed, the cobblestones of Elfreth's Alley claiming the title of the nation's oldest continuously inhabited residential street: the founding of the republic is not a museum abstraction here but a physical layer of the city that pedestrians move through every day. That weight of significance could make Philadelphia feel like a monument to itself, but it does not. The place is too argumentative, too proud of its own neighbourhoods, too invested in its food for that.

Old City is the obvious starting point for anyone arriving for the first time, and the concentration of landmarks within a few walkable blocks is genuinely remarkable. The Museum of the American Revolution, which opened on Chestnut Street in 2017, goes considerably further than the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in explaining what the war actually meant to the people who lived through it, including those for whom independence delivered very little. A guided tour with early access allows visitors to move through the galleries before the crowds build, which makes a real difference in a museum whose centrepiece, a full-scale reproduction of Washington's campaign marquee, benefits from space and quiet.