Living in Old City, Philadelphia

Cobblestone streets radiate out from Independence Hall at Old City's edge, holding most of Philadelphia's Colonial-era architecture alongside a modern layer of art galleries and after-dark bars. First Fridays bring gallery crowds out onto those same blocks each month, and restaurants along 2nd and 3rd Streets keep the sidewalks busy well into the evening, long after the historic sites themselves have closed for the day and the tour buses have cleared out.

The tourist foot traffic around the historic sites can make a simple walk to the Market-Frankford stop slower than it should be on a weekend afternoon, when tour groups and camera crowds fill the narrow sidewalks near the Hall and the surrounding squares, thinning out again once the last tour of the day wraps up.

By night the galleries give way to a bar scene that carries the energy through to last call, one of the few pockets of the city where eighteenth-century brick and a Saturday-night crowd share the same block, and where a resident can walk from a museum exhibit to a rooftop bar without crossing a major street.