The Grand Old Lady of Locust Street is America's oldest working opera house. The Academy of Music at 240 South Broad Street, on Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts, was built 1855-1857 by architects Napoleon LeBrun and Gustavus Runge, modelled on Milan's La Scala, and opened with a gala ball on 26 January 1857 followed a month later by Verdi's Il trovatore. No American opera house has served its original purpose longer, and the 1962 National Historic Landmark designation merely formalised what the.....

The Tavern is the smaller of two performance spaces at the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern, the independently owned music venue at 15711 Waterloo Road in Cleveland's North Collinwood neighbourhood. With a capacity of 148, the Tavern provides an intimate, low-ceilinged room that puts audiences within arm's reach of the stage -- an environment that suits emerging artists, solo acoustic performers, experimental acts, and residency-style bookings. The room includes a back bar and kitchen area added t.....

Bringing a distinctive blend of live music, bowling and food to Philadelphia's Fishtown neighbourhood, Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia opened in 2020 as part of the well-known entertainment brand that began in New York. Set on Canal Street within the sprawling Fillmore Philadelphia complex, it pairs a serious concert space with boutique bowling lanes and a full-service restaurant, creating a venue that doubles as a night-long destination rather than a single-purpose room. At its core is a live-music.....

A working winery inside a shopping mall sounds improbable, and that was rather the point. City Winery Philadelphia opened on 19 September 2019 at 990 Filbert Street, at 10th and Filbert inside Fashion District Philadelphia - the gleaming rebuild of the old Gallery mall on East Market Street - with Americana songwriter Justin Townes Earle playing the first concert on 30 September. The multi-storey venue made the chain an instant rarity in Philadelphia: a 350-seat, fully seated concert hall with d.....

Arcade Fire, Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes all played their first Philadelphia shows in a church basement with a capacity around 600 and no bar. The First Unitarian Church at 2125 Chestnut Street in Center City - a congregation dating to 1796, in a Frank Furness-designed building - became, improbably, the most important DIY venue in the city's history. Punk shows arrived in the mid-1990s through the Cabbage Collective's all-ages bookings, and from 1996 Sean Agnew's R5 Productions made the basement -.....

A cornerstone of Philadelphia's live-music scene, Franklin Music Hall is a large general-admission concert hall in the city's Callowhill district, long familiar to local audiences under its former name, the Electric Factory. Housed in a converted industrial building, the venue carries a storied reputation built up over decades as one of the city's most important rooms for touring acts, and it took its current name following a rebranding in 2018. The hall is a spacious, mostly standing room hold.....

In the heart of downtown Philadelphia, the city's Hard Rock Cafe occupies a striking historic building on Market Street, just steps from the famous Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and the bustling Reading Terminal Market. Hard Rock's Philadelphia outpost has long been one of the most visible chain restaurants in the historic district and a familiar landmark for the many millions of visitors who descend on the city each year to explore America's revolutionary heritage. The restaurant occupies th.....

On the historic Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia, Independence Hall is one of the most important buildings in American history and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The handsome Georgian-style brick structure, completed in 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House to serve as the seat of the colonial Pennsylvania government, took on its present extraordinary historic significance over the course of the American Revolution, when it became the meeting place of the Second Continental Congress and th.....

On the corner of 6th and Market Streets in the heart of historic Philadelphia, the Independence Visitor Center serves as the official welcome centre for Independence National Historical Park and the wider Philadelphia tourism region. The 50,000-square-foot building opened in November 2001 as part of an effort to provide a single, modern point of orientation for the millions of visitors descending each year on Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and the surrounding historic district, replacing a .....

A boxer's corner bar became the club that turned Fishtown around. Johnny Brenda's, at 1201 Frankford Avenue on the corner of Girard in Philadelphia, is a gastropub, taproom and 250-capacity upstairs music venue widely credited as the catalyst of one of America's most storied neighbourhood revivals. The name predates the hip: boxer John Imbrenda opened Johnny Brenda's in 1967, and it served Fishtown's workingmen for decades. In 2003, Paul Kimport and William Reed - owners of the pioneering Stand.....