Philadelphia

Introduction

Located in southeastern Pennsylvania, at the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, Philadelphia is the state's largest city and the fifth largest in the United States. Home of the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell—and the first capital of the United States—Philadelphia has one of the nation's greatest concentrations of historic sites, which play a major role in attracting some three million visitors to the city every year. Although it has ceded its one-time position as manufacturing capital of the nation, Philadelphia today is home to a vigorous service-oriented economy as well as the number one freshwater port in the United States. Its central location in relation to the cities of the Eastern Seaboard, and the eastern United States as a whole, combined with its population, size, and cultural and recreational resources continue to make Philadelphia one of the nation's major cities.