This guide follows five places across Center City Philadelphia, from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the old town near the Delaware River: the Academy of Natural Sciences, LOVE Park, the Chinatown Friendship Gate, Franklin Square and the Museum of the American Revolution. They range from dinosaurs to a 1980s gate built by craftsmen from China, and all five are stops on our scavenger hunt, so you can link them in one walk from west to east.
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
The Academy was founded on 25 January 1812, in rented rooms on North Second Street, and it is often described as the oldest institution of natural history in America. Its collection grew so fast that it moved five times in the 19th century, and since 1876 it has stood at the corner of 19th and Race Streets, now on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Logan Square. In 2011 it became affiliated with Drexel University. Its research collections hold more than 19 million specimens.
Its most famous moment came in 1868. Ten years earlier, the bones of a duck-billed dinosaur had been dug up in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and the Academy's Joseph Leidy had described them as Hadrosaurus foulkii. In 1868 the Academy put the skeleton on show, and it became the first place in the world where the public could see a mounted dinosaur. The crowds were so large that it began charging admission. A restored mount of Hadrosaurus, nicknamed Haddy, returned to Dinosaur Hall in 2025.
- Dinosaur Hall and the Hadrosaurus foulkii skeleton, the species that started public dinosaur displays.
- The habitat dioramas, which show animals in recreations of their natural surroundings.
LOVE Park (JFK Plaza)
The plaza's official name is John F. Kennedy Plaza, but everyone calls it LOVE Park after the sculpture that stands in it. It was designed by the city planner Edmund Bacon and the architect Vincent Kling, built in 1965 over an underground garage and dedicated in 1967. Robert Indiana's LOVE sculpture, with its tilted O, was first set up here for the Bicentennial in 1976 and taken away in 1978; Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr. then bought it and gave it a permanent place in the plaza that same year.
From the 1980s the granite plaza became famous among skateboarders, even though the city banned skating there in 1984; it appeared in the video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 in 2000. A rebuild from 2016 to 2018 turned the hard plaza into a greener space with lawns, gardens and a new fountain. LOVE Park is one of our scavenger hunt stops.
- The LOVE sculpture, with City Hall behind it on one side and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on the other.
- The round, saucer-shaped building from 1960, once the city visitor centre and since 2006 the Fairmount Park Welcome Center.
- The view along the Parkway: the plaza is the point where the long avenue ends at City Hall.
Chinatown Friendship Gate
The Friendship Gate on 10th Street at Arch Street marks the entrance to Philadelphia's Chinatown. It came out of the 1982 sister-city agreement between Philadelphia and Tianjin: in the autumn of 1983 twelve craftsmen from Tianjin and Beijing spent about three months building it in the traditional Qing style, using wood, tiles and stone shipped from China, and it was unveiled in January 1984. The gate is about 40 feet tall and was restored and rededicated in 2008. It stands in a neighbourhood that shrank during the 20th century as the Convention Center and the Vine Street Expressway took land, and in 1973 residents' protests forced a change to the expressway that saved several blocks. The gate is one of our scavenger hunt stops.
- The painted beams in green and gold, with dragons and birds along the roofline.
- The tiled roof and the stone bases, made with materials shipped from China rather than sourced locally.
Franklin Square
Franklin Square is one of the five squares that William Penn drew into his plan for Philadelphia in 1682. It was first called North East Publick Square and was renamed after Benjamin Franklin in 1825. Over the centuries it served as a burial ground for a German Reformed congregation, a cattle pasture and market, and during the War of 1812 as a powder magazine and drill ground. Its fountain dates from 1838.
In the 20th century the square fell into decline, until Historic Philadelphia took over its care and reopened it on 31 July 2006, in the year of Franklin's 300th birthday. Today it is a family park with a carousel, mini golf and a burger stand. Franklin Square is one of our scavenger hunt stops.
- The restored 1838 fountain in the centre of the square.
- The view east across 6th Street to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and Isamu Noguchi's Bolt of Lightning, a steel sculpture from 1984 that recalls Franklin's kite experiment.
Museum of the American Revolution
This museum opened on 19 April 2017, 242 years after the battles of Lexington and Concord that began the war. It stands at Third and Chestnut Streets, a short walk from Independence Hall, in a building designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Its core collection began with objects gathered by the Reverend W. Herbert Burk in the early 1900s and now counts several thousand items.
The highlight is George Washington's headquarters tent, which served as his office and sleeping quarters for much of the war; it is shown in its own theatre on the second floor. The galleries also include a full-size copy of Boston's Liberty Tree, a large model of an 18th-century privateer ship, a gallery on the Oneida Nation, who fought on the American side, and an early newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence. The museum is one of our scavenger hunt stops.
- Objects from Washington's camp, such as silver camp cups, and the thirteen-star Commander-in-Chief's Standard.
- The Liberty Tree replica and the privateer ship, where you can step into the revolution's stories.
How to see them in one walk
Start at the Academy of Natural Sciences on Logan Square and walk down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to LOVE Park, with City Hall across the street. From there head east along Arch Street to the Friendship Gate at 10th Street, and continue a few blocks to Franklin Square. Turn south towards Independence National Historical Park, pass the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, and finish at the Museum of the American Revolution on Third Street. Allow time for the two museums, which are the longest stops.
See Philadelphia with World City Trail
Our Philadelphia scavenger hunt turns the city centre into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from the Academy of Natural Sciences to Elfreth's Alley, and all five places in this guide are stops. The others are City Hall, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Betsy Ross House and Elfreth's Alley. At each stop you solve a puzzle and learn a story, at your own pace.
There is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Philadelphia, for people who prefer a different format.
Play the Philadelphia scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Philadelphia →
Play the outdoor escape game in Philadelphia →
Facts checked in October 2026.