Benjamin Franklin Museum

Top choice in Philadelphia

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This underground museum is dedicated to Franklin's storied life as a printer (he started the nation's first newspaper), inventor (Bifocals! Lightning rods!) and political figure who signed the Declaration of Independence. The exhibition, divided into five areas, with each focusing on a particular trait of the man, is inventively laid out with interactive elements and plenty of famous Franklin quotations.

In the same courtyard, don't miss the printing office, where park rangers demonstrate an 18th-century printing press similar to that used by Franklin.

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