Live in Philly or are you traveling to the City of Brotherly Love?
Active duty service members and veterans can visit Penn Museum for free.
Special exhibitions at the museum include Native American Voices, Bearing Witness: 4 Days in West Kingston, and Ancient Egypt, which provides visitors with an inside look at where artifacts come from and how they are preserved.
The museum features a total of five galleries, including the newly opened Middle East Galleries, which explore how ancient Mesopotamian societies gave rise to the world’s first cities.
On display is the 4,500-year-old crowning jewelry of a Mesopotamian queen, an ancient spreadsheet on a clay tablet, one of the world’s oldest wine vessels, and a baby’s rattle.
In all, the museum houses more than 1,200 artifacts. An ongoing building transformation is reimagining nearly 75 percent of the gallery space. Two new signature galleries will be unveiled this November: the Mexico and Central America Gallery and the Africa Gallery.
Penn Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. On the first Wednesday of each month, it stays open until 8 p.m. For more information, call 215.898.4000.