Photo: Joseph E.B. Elliott

Hidden City Philadelphia pulls back the curtain on the city’s most remarkable places and connects them to new people, functions, and resources. We celebrate the power of place and inspire social action to make our city a better place to live, work, and play. We do this through four complementary programs.

The Hidden City Daily, our web magazine, fosters public dialogue by exploring the intersection of people and place, and the tension between the past and the possible future. The Daily publishes 25 – 30 posts a week (Monday through Friday) and is aimed at exploring the hidden wonders of our city: neighborhoods, buildings, parks, businesses, personalities, and other topics.

Our Hidden City Tours & Events provide immersive experiences of remarkable places, illuminate their stories, and afford networking opportunities among our growing number of members. Our tours range from focused explorations of single sites to bus tours drawing thematic connections among multiple sites. Our events take food, drink, and often artistic and design elements and join them in extraordinary spaces with great people.

The Hidden City Festival started it all in 2009, with an award-winning and widely acclaimed event encompassing nine heritage sites and ten major artist projects, and was visited by over 10,000 people. Envisioned as a quadrennial, the next Festival will take place in summer 2013 and include 12 sites and artist projects. Stay tuned for our call for artist proposals and other news as we unveil our plans for the next Festival.

Our Community Services offer ongoing support to past participating Festival sites and their communities as well as the Greater Philadelphia artistic community. Activities range from new program design, planning, to site scouting for artists, and historical research. We are developing a new youth-led community design program, “EnvisionNOW!” that will help us identify issues and begin conversations with sites and communities about how we can continue to support their goals and aspirations.