Stride StoriesRunning tour · Philadelphia
Liberty and the Rocky Steps
7.0 mi run
How it works. Press start and go. As you reach each place, a narrator tells its story, timed to your pace. Your music drops down while a story plays and comes back after. Tours download to your phone and play without a connection.
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The stories on this route
Boathouse Row
Look along the riverbank: fifteen boathouses, built from the 1860s to the early 1900s, each in a different style. Find the turreted stone one, the Undine Barge Club, number 13. Frank Furness's firm built it in the early 1880s, and outside it has barely changed.
City Hall and William Penn
Look up, to the very top of City Hall's tower. That's William Penn: 37 feet of bronze, more than 53,000 pounds. He went up in fourteen sections in 1894. He faces northeast, toward the site of his treaty with the Lenape.
The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall
Behind the glass hangs the Liberty Bell. It cracked on its very first test ring. Two local men, John Pass and John Stow, melted it down and cast a new one. That one sounded so bad the crowd mocked them, and they recast it again.
Benjamin Franklin's grave
Look through the iron railing set in the wall. Just inside, the flat marble slab marks the grave of Benjamin Franklin and his wife, Deborah.
The Betsy Ross House
Look for the small brick house with the flag: the Betsy Ross House. The story that she made the first American flag was first told in public in 1870, by her grandson, William Canby. He searched government records and found nothing to back it up.
Elfreth's Alley
Look down this narrow lane of brick row houses, doors right on the sidewalk. This is Elfreth's Alley. Around 1703, two neighbours, Arthur Wells and John Gilbert, each gave a strip of their land to make it: Wells five feet, Gilbert ten. These were never merchants' mansions.
Eastern State Penitentiary
Look at that wall: thirty feet high, windowless, with towers like a castle. That was the point. The commission wanted the outside to 'convey to the mind a cheerless blank'.
The Rocky Steps
Look up at the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There are seventy-two: five flights of thirteen, then seven at the top.
Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source
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