Walking & Guided Tours

Explore the Museum with an expert! Take a guided tour and enhance your experience with additional insight into the artifacts and exhibits, behind-the-scenes details of the Museum’s creation, and opportunities to dig deeper into the stories behind objects on display.

On this page, you will find information and ticket links for the Museum's robust lineup of tours, including early access tours, highlights tours, audio tours, walking tours, relaxed experience mornings, and more.

Outdoor Walking Tour: Black Founders of Philadelphia

Offered Saturdays at 2 p.m. resuming in July 2023 (Walking tours through June 2023 have been cancelled.)
$34 for walking tour only (non-members), $45 for walking tour plus Museum admission (non-members), $24 for Members

Explore Old City Philadelphia’s rich Black history through a 1.5-hour guided walking tour of the neighborhood, including stops at iconic sites like Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the mother church of the nation’s first Black denomination, and Washington Square park, which served as a burial ground for many free and enslaved people of African descent in the 18th century. The tour also will stop at sites where free Black Philadelphian, philanthropist, and abolitionist James Forten and his family built their legacy as explored in the Museum’s Black Founders special exhibition, including the location of the Forten's family household near Fourth and Lombard St. Don’t forget to bring water and sunscreen, and make sure to save time to explore the Museum before or after your tour!

Outdoor Walking Tour: Revolutionary City

Offered Sundays at 2 p.m. resuming in July 2023 (Walking tours through June 2023 have been cancelled.)
$34 for walking tour only (non-members), $45 for walking tour plus Museum admission (non-members), $24 for Members

Join an educator to explore our Revolutionary neighborhood and imagine what life was like in the 1700s. This 1.5-hour guided tour covers about a mile and stops outside iconic sites including City Tavern, Independence Hall, and Carpenters Hall to discuss the experiences of everyday people in the Revolutionary era. Don’t forget to bring water and sunscreen, and make sure to save time to explore the Museum before or after your tour!

Gallery Highlights Tour: Core Exhibition

Offered Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Admission plus $10 non-members, $10 Members

Join a Museum educator for this 60-minute tour of the core exhibit galleries highlighting objects and hearing about how the diverse groups of people living in North America experienced the American Revolution, including Loyalists, Hessians, free and enslaved people of African descent, women at home and at war, and other Revolutionaries. During your tour, you will explore the American Revolution from its beginnings in the 1760s and trace its ongoing story.

Gallery Highlights Tour: Black Voices of the Revolution

Offered Saturdays and Sundays at 12 p.m.
Admission plus $10 non-members, $10 Members

Join a Museum educator for this 60-minute tour of the core exhibit galleries highlighting a diverse set of stories, experiences, and objects related to people of African descent during the American Revolution. Along the way, you’ll see a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, learn about Elizabeth Freeman’s historic court case, consider what the engraving “No Slavery” on a Continental Army soldier’s musket meant, and discuss William Lee's role on campaign as Washington's enslaved valet. Through it all, you’ll have the opportunity to consider what words like freedom, liberty, and equality meant for different people within the Revolutionary era, and how these ideas continue to influence our lives today.

Early Access Guided Tour: Core Galleries

Offered every Friday and Saturday at 9 a.m. 
$50 non-members, $35 Members

This 60-minute guided tour offers visitors a private opportunity to see the Museum's exhibits before we open. These early access tours are great for members and first time visitors alike! Space is limited to 15 people.

Early Access Guided Tour: Black Founders Exhibit

Offered every Thursday and Sunday at 9 a.m.
$50 non-members, $35 Members

This 60-minute guided tour offers visitors a private opportunity to see our current special exhibition, Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia, open through Nov. 26, 2023. Space is limited to 15 people.

Audio Tours

Listen on a sanitized, Museum-issued device (available at front desk) for $3 for members, $4 for groups, and $5 for general public with regular admission.

Take our audio tour of the Museum’s core exhibition narrated by the Museum’s President and CEO Dr. R. Scott Stephenson, and featuring the “voices” of Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American female poet, and Baroness Frederika von Riedesel, who aided the wounded and journaled about her experience. Available in English, Spanish, and French!

Touch Tours

Offered on Demand with Booking in Advance

Join a Museum Educator for a tactile tour of the Museum’s core galleries designed for guests with visual disabilities and their sighted companions. This hour-and-a-half tour includes sensory experiences and replica objects that activate the history of the Revolution through hands-on learning. Touch Tours are free with admission and can be booked in advance! Call our front desk at (267) 579-3046 to book a ticket.