Philadelphia is a city in the U.S. state and county of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a 2017 census-estimated population of 1,580,863. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017.

Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley metropolitan area, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis; it is Pennsylvania’s largest metropolitan area.

Philadelphia has evolved into an educational and economic hub as well as a major transportation hub for the Northeast – which connects to major highways such as Interstate 95 (I-95), which runs north-south through Philadelphia en route from Maine to Florida; I-76, which heads west from Philadelphia toward Ohio and Pittsburgh; I-676/U.S. Route 30 (the “Blue Route”), which heads north from Center City toward New York City via eastern Pennsylvania; and U.S. Route 202 (US 202), which heads northeast toward.

Last modified: September 4, 2022