Disease, Erasure, and Forgotten Bones: A Philadelphia Walking Tour

Philadelphia has been burying its dead for 300 years – and then forgetting where it put them. On this walking tour, you'll trace what happened to the city's lost graveyards, from potter's fields and epidemic victims to graves discovered under parking lots. You'll also hear how those forgotten burials reveal stories about race, religion, and real estate that still resonate today.

The tour starts at Washington Square, one of William Penn's original five parks, which holds an estimated 4,500–7,500 bodies beneath its manicured lawn. From there, you'll wind through the streets of Old City, past the site of Benjamin Franklin's grave and the National Constitution Center, before heading north toward Franklin Square, where an 1830s church cemetery and it's tombstones were just buried under the dirt.

Along the way, you'll hear how Philadelphia's Black community nursed the city through the catastrophic 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic, only to be accused of profiting from the crisis afterward. You'll also discover how a clandestine 1950s archaeological dig under Washington Square – kept secret for political reasons – unearthed a soldier who may or may not have been American. The tour ends at the site of the First Baptist Burial Ground on Arch Street, where construction workers in 2016 uncovered bones in a parking lot, sparking questions about who owns the dead that Philadelphia has yet to fully answer.

On this 40-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Stand above Washington Square's Tomb of the Revolutionary War Unknowns, whose occupant might have been British
• Hear how Yellow Fever, traced from West Africa to Haiti to Philadelphia, killed 10% of the city's population
• Learn why Benjamin Franklin's London home was found to contain 15 bodies, including children
• Visit the Arch Street Meeting House, where an estimated 20,000 people are buried in unmarked Quaker graves
• Discover the disputed grave of Betsy Ross and why the people meant to exhume her couldn't produce the body
• See the site where 40 volunteer archaeologists raced a backhoe to save what they could of a forgotten cemetery

This tour will leave you wondering what's beneath every sidewalk you cross in this city.

Tour cover Image from The Arch Street Project.