Center City West

Hourly tours Tu-F, 11AM-4PM take visitors through this fine old townhouse owned by a pair of rare-book dealers, which has grown into a museum and archive. The Maurice Sendak room, full of his sketches and pages, also contains Herman Melville's own bookcase, which holds the copy of Moby-Dick he inscribed to Hawthorne. A handsome double library on another floor holds Joyce's manuscript for Ulysses. On the top floor, poet Marianne Moore's Greenwich Village living room has been installed, to go along with the Rosenbach's trove of Moore papers.

Displays the largest collection of Rodin's work outside of Paris.

The Comcast Center

Opened in 2008, at 975 feet tall, the Comcast Center is Philadelphia's tallest skyscraper and the headquareters of the cable provider. The building features a public plaza with a gorgeous fountain display, a dramatic eight-story “Winter Garden” and an energy-saving “glass curtain” that wraps around the Comcast Center, allowing for a 360° view of Philadelphia’s urban landscape. The building has also unveiled a Sony Style Comcast Labs Store, which includes an “Interactive Technology Lab” that is open to the public. The lobby has garnered attention as a tourist attraction. At first glance, the north wall of its lobby appears to be a wood veneer wall, but actually, it's a massive 2,000 square feet high-definition LED screen that's just displaying a picture of a wood veneer wall. Wait a minute, and a dancing figure might appear on the wall, or the entire wall might fade out and be replaced with a photograph or a video show. The computer-generated images are so realistic, you’ll think they’re jumping out of the wall. With a resolution 500% greater than that of an HD television, the Comcast Experience is a remarkable technological and artistic achievement. The video wall, a giant HD video screen that is actually the largest four-millimeter LED screen in the world, is located right in the building’s publicly accessible main lobby, so everyone can enjoy it. Visit during the holidays for special seasonal displays.

Originally open only to medical students, this collection of medical oddities is quickly becoming one of the city's most popular attractions. Not for the faint of heart, this museum includes lots of items in formaldehyde, lots of skeletons, and one of the only women to ever decompose into soap.

This museum attracts some of the top scientific exhibits in the world, including the Titanic Artifacts exhibit, an upcoming exhibit of the Egyptian Treasures found in King Tut's tomb, and the 300th birthday celebration of Ben Franklin himself, which was in 2006. Be sure to walk through the giant-sized human heart, a favorite with kids. Also features planetarium and the immense Tuttleman IMAX Theater and its four-story, domed screen with fifty-six speakers. This museum is incredibly popular with as a field trip destination for local schools, so be advised that mornings and early afternoons on weekdays may be crowded with schoolchildren.