The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a vast collection (one of the largest in the US). We lingered in the Impressionist Era and were in awe of their Monet’s, Manet’s, Degas’ and The Sunflower painting by Vincent Van Gogh.

Here’s the clincher about the museum - we bought the City Pass (for one day only) and as I mentioned before, it just wasn’t worth it for one day. The City Pass includes admission into the Museum yet when I presented it to the cashier, they acted as if they’d never heard of such a thing before, let alone held one in their hand. They let us in the Museum, but for general admission only. Special exhibits are an additional charge.

We found ample parking (no charge) in the "back" of the museum (hard to say where the back is because it's perched high on a hill and has entrances on two sides) or the side not facing the city.

I have been to many art museums in the U.S. and Europe, and the PMA ranks among the best. The building itself is quite majestic, rising over the city on what was the highest point of the city. They have an incredible collection of Impressionist paintings, as well as the Dutch masters and medieval art. An interesting section of the museum takes the visitor on a journey through an historical site in Thailand, Syria, Japan, and medieval England.

Don't forget to take a little time to walk down the hill in the back to peruse the old Philadelphia Waterworks. Its rotunda at the end of the buildings was the most painted site in the country in the late 19th century.

Only been inside this place once, and I was in for about 20 minutes before I got horribly bored. Okay, okay--so I'm not a big art buff, but running up those museum steps never gets old.

Perhaps Philadelphia’s greatest landmark (no mean feat in a city with so many), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) entered the consciousness of non-art lovers everywhere with its starring role as a backdrop to the "Rocky" movies. While the neo-classical hulk at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the views it affords south to the skyscrapers of Center City and west over the Schuykill are justly iconic, even greater beauty is located inside the museum itself.

Stepping inside, you’re greeted by a vast hall bisected by a forbidding staircase topped by a sculpture of Diana by August Saint-Gaudens. If the admittedly arduous task of following in Rocky Balboa’s footsteps has left you more breathless than the attractive main hall has, turn right in order to explore the museum’s superb collection of late nineteenth century and modern art, which fills the ground floor’s east wing. The French Impressionists are well represented here, as is their great intellectual heir Paul Cezanne, who was honored here in 1996 (the ninetieth anniversary of his death) with the greatest retrospective of his works since the 1930s. Moving from the beautiful to the surreal, the PMA boasts an entire room designed by Marcel Duchamps and filled with his works, including "The Large Glass: The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even."

As the birthplace of Rembrandt Peale and Thomas Eakins, and the home of America’s oldest art school, Philadelphia was an important center for American art for over a century before the PMA’s foundation in 1877. Their work, as well as that of the Lithuanian-born sculptor Jacques Lipschitz, features prominently in the superb collection of American art that encompasses much of the ground floor’s west wing, and is surpassed only by the National Gallery in Washington. A complementary collection of applied art from around Pennsylvania including by the so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch" (here correctly described as "Pennsylvania Germans") rounds out this wing. This is also where the museum’s renowned temporary exhibitions (the most recent covered Salvador Dali) are displayed.

If the PMA stopped here (and you might well wish to) it would be an outstanding museum, but it’s the collections of East Asian, South Asian, Medieval, and Islamic art in the upstairs portion of the west wing that really set it apart in my mind. Few other museums offers as harmonious (or historically motivated) a presentation of the artistic dialogue between multiple cultures and none that I am aware of has so many rooms that are intended as faithful recreations of everything from Venetian palazzi to Indian temples. The finest, however, are the Moorish courtyard and recreated Japanese tea-house, which interestingly seem to be among the museum’s less visited attractions. I find them wonderful places to sit and think. While interesting, the comprehensive collections of armor and European art are probably the least compelling portions of the museum, solely because its other three quarters are so outstanding.

The PMA is essential to any visit to Philadelphia!

See the PMA’s comprehensive website for more information.

Even if you have never visited Philadelphia, chances are you know what the art museum looks like. When Rocky runs up the stairs in that famous scene, he is doing so on the front stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Having visited here several times before, always to see a specific exhibit, this time was no exception; Salvador Dali is what drew us.

This is one of my very favorite museums in the world. The set up is fascinating to me. We decided after going through the Dali exhibit that we would take one of the tours of the museum. There is a board next to the information desk that will tell you the time and which tour will be offered. You can also pick up a small brochure called Today at the Museum, which will give you a list of all the tours and programs that are happening today. After looking them over, we decided to do a headphone tour. For $5 you have your choice of five tours, we narrowed it down to the Director’s Delights and the Museum Highlights . We allowed ourselves to be lead by the director. The beauty of that choice is you can always stop and do any of the items on the Museum Highlights Tour. Another good thing about Today at the Museum is that it gives you a list of the upcoming exhibits as well as the currently running exhibits.

We began on the second floor with a visit to a 16th century Altar Screen.

Galleries 250-299 cover European art from 1500-1850. That encompasses a variety of art and styles, as well as period rooms. The rooms are my favorites though the Viger LeBrun portrait of Marie Antoinette had me enthralled.

The room that the director takes us to is the Landsdowne Room, which once graced Landsdowne House in London. It has an amazing ceiling and played host to many famous people during its heyday.

As part of our tour, we also visited the early European rooms to see the Van der Weyden Gallery and the Van Eyck painting of St. Francis. It is a difficult painting to find because it is very tiny. Also take time to visit the Hudon bust of Benjamin Franklin; it seems fitting, since this is Philadelphia.

If you get hungry, there is a cafeteria, as well as a more formal restaurant. We stopped only briefly for tea and a cookie, but I have to admit that the salad bar at the cafeteria was very tempting. There are several gift shops, with the main one being in the same area as the restaurants.

We took a taxi to get to the museum; it was $10 with tip from our hotel. We got back down to the Independence Park area on the Phlash for $1. Both ways worked well for us. The Phlash and the taxi pick-up are in the lobby.