What can you see inside Philadelphia Museum of Art?
There is an irony at the heart of the Philadelphia Museum of Art that the city has learned to embrace. The building houses one of the finest art collections in the Western Hemisphere, with over 240,000 objects spanning 2,000 years from medieval armor to Marcel Duchamp's enigmatic final work. It holds the largest collection of Duchamp's art anywhere on Earth, a reconstructed 12th-century French cloister, a complete Japanese ceremonial teahouse, and paintings by Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso. And yet most of the world knows it as the building where Sylvester Stallone ran up the steps in 1976. The 72 stone steps leading up to the museum's Greek Revival entrance have become a pilgrimage site. Visitors from every corner of the globe jog up them, raise their fists at the top, and pose with the bronze Rocky statue at the base. That view from the top, looking down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway toward LOVE Park and City Hall, is genuinely one of the best urban panoramas in the United States. But the real reward waits inside. A 2021 renovation by Frank Gehry added dramatic new gallery spaces and restored original features that had been hidden for decades. A knowledgeable guide helps you navigate a collection so vast that trying to see it all guarantees seeing none of it well.