World City Guide

Culture

Philadelphia's culture stretches a long way back into America's past – the city lays claim to both the country's oldest music hall and oldest theatre. South Broad Street, known as the ‘Avenue of the Arts,’ is crammed with theatres, concert halls and performing arts schools. Its crown jewel is The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, 260 South Broad Street (tel: (215) 790 5800; website: www.kimmelcenter.org). The Kimmel Center’s state-of-the-art Verizon Hall is home to the Philadelphia Orchestra (tel: (215) 893 1900; website: www.philorch.org), and Peter Nero and the Philly Pops (tel: (215) 546 6400; website: www.phillypops.com), which performs everything from classics to rock n’ roll. The Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater’s resident companies include the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (tel: (215) 545 5451; website: www.chamberorchestra.org) and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (tel: (215) 569 8080; website: www.philadelphiachambermusic.org).

Entertainment listings appear in newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and the monthly Philadelphia Magazine, as well as in free publications such as City Paper and Philadelphia Weekly. Tickets can be purchased directly from the venues or from TicketMaster (tel: (215) 336 2000; website: www.ticketmaster.com). For Kimmel Center events, contact Ticket Philadelphia (tel: (215) 893 1999; website: www.ticketphiladelphia.org).

Music: Opened in 1857, the Academy of Music, Broad Street and Locust Street (tel: (215) 893 1999; website: www.academyofmusic.org), is the country's oldest music hall and home to the Opera Company of Philadelphia (tel: (215) 732 8400 or 893 3600; website: www.operaphilly.com).

Theatre: America’s oldest theatre, Walnut Street Theater, Ninth Street and Walnut Street (tel: (215) 574 3550; website: www.wstonline.org), is in Philadelphia, along with the award-winning African-American Freedom Theatre, 1346 North Broad Street (tel: (215) 765 2793; website: www.freedomtheatre.org), the Forrest Theatre, 1114 Walnut Street (tel: (800) 432 7780; website: www.forrest-theatre.com), which performs Broadway blockbusters, and the Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut Street (tel: (215) 569 9700; website: www.princemusictheater.org), which produces original musicals. The Arden Theatre Company, 40 North Second Street (tel: (215) 922 1122; website: www.ardentheatre.org), stages innovative productions. Productions at the Wilma Theater, Broad Street and Spruce Street (tel: (215) 546 7824; website: www.wilmatheater.org), vary.

Dance: The Pennsylvania Ballet (tel: (215) 551 7000; website: www.paballet.org) dances classics and new works at the Academy of Music, Broad Street and Locust Street, and Merriam Theater, 250 South Broad Street. A leading African-American dance company, Philadanco (tel: (215) 387 8200; website: www.philadanco.org), performs at the Kimmel Center, 260 South Broad Street .

Film: Philadelphia has been the setting for many films, including Rocky (1976), Trading Places (1983), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000) and, of course, Philadelphia (1993). Cinemas showing mainstream films are The Ritz Five, 214 Walnut Street (tel: (215) 440 1184 or 925 7900), and The Ritz at the Bourse, Fourth Street and Chestnut Street (tel: (215) 440 1181 or 925 7900), which has comfortable reclining seats, and also shows foreign and limited release films. See cutting-edge films at the Philadelphia Film Festival, 7-20 April, 2005, and the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 7-18 July, 2005, (tel: (267) 765 9700; website: www.phillyfests.com).

Literary Notes: The city’s most famous citizen, Benjamin Franklin, penned his timeless words of wisdom in his annual, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733-58), and Autobiography and Other Writings (1771-1788) here. Esmond Wright wrote Benjamin Franklin: His Life As He Wrote It (1990).

From 1837 until 1847, Edgar Allan Poe resided in Philadelphia and wrote his famous The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and The Gold Bug (1843), as well as the poem Annabel Lee (1849), dedicated to his beloved wife. His house at North Seventh and Spring Garden streets is now the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site.

Other renowned literary Philadelphians include the poet Walt Whitman and author James A Michener, who hails from nearby Bucks County. Bucks County was also home to the Pulitzer- and Nobel-prize-winning author, Pearl S Buck, author of The Good Earth (1931). Her farmhouse at Perkasie can also be visited. Upper-crust Philadelphia society was portrayed in Philip Barry’s play, The Philadelphia Story (1939), which was made into a film starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart.