Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art opened its current building in 1928 after decades of construction, replacing the city’s earlier Memorial Hall from the 1876 Centennial Exposition. The Greek Revival structure — modeled loosely on the Parthenon, with polychrome terracotta ornamentation on the pediments — sits at the western terminus of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at the edge of Fairmount Park. Its collection spans more than 240,000 objects across 200 galleries, with particular strength in European painting, American art, and Asian decorative arts.

The museum’s most famous feature is not inside it. The grand staircase leading from the Parkway to the main entrance became a cultural landmark in 1976 when Sylvester Stallone ran up it in the first Rocky film, raising his fists to the strains of “Gonna Fly Now.” The sequence — and the four subsequent sequels and prequels that reprised it — made the steps a pilgrimage site for visitors who come to run the climb and pump their fists at the top, regardless of whether they ever enter the museum.

A bronze statue of Rocky Balboa, originally created as a prop for Rocky III in 1982 and donated to the city by Stallone, stands at the base of the steps. It was placed at various locations around the museum and stadium area over the decades before finding a permanent home here. The Museum of Art and the Rocky statue are arguably the most-photographed pairing in the city.