Philadelphia audiotours

On July 4th, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in a brick building on Chestnut Street that the founding generation called the State House and everyone since has called Independence Hall. Eleven years later, the same building hosted the Constitutional Convention. In the intervening years, Philadelphia served as the young nation's capital, and Elfreth's Alley, a narrow cobbled street behind the Delaware waterfront developed in 1703, is the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the United States. The weight of first-ness is heavy here, and the city wears it with a mix of pride and dark humour that is distinctly its own.

Philadelphia has more outdoor murals than any other American city, more public statues and monuments per capita, 67 National Historic Landmarks and a street food culture built around things that have no exact equivalent elsewhere.

The cheesesteak, invented at Pat's King of Steaks on 9th Street in South Philly sometime in the 1930s, the soft pretzel from the Reading Terminal Market, the roast pork sandwich from DiNic's that opened at the same market in 1918. The Italian Market on 9th Street, the oldest and largest working outdoor market in the United States, has been running since the 1880s.