The giant stone fortress on Broad Street is free to walk into

City Hall looks like a fortress on Broad Street, and you can walk straight into it for free. There is an arch on each side, a courtyard in the middle, and 548 feet of tower on top.

The open courtyard inside Philadelphia City Hall, looking up at white marble walls, rows of office windows, and the rounded stone base of the tower under a blue sky.

Every summer my son and I end up at the fountains next to City Hall. They are a flat grid of water jets coming up out of the granite. He runs through them, and I chase him. If my wife's around, she'll hang out on the wire chairs and tables off to the side while I behave like a crazy dad. Behind the fountains, not noticed in our joyous water-filled abandon, is this ridiculous stone fortress with a statue of a man on top of it. City Hall.

City Hall is 548 feet of granite and brick on Broad Street with a 37-foot bronze William Penn on top of it that weighs over 20 tons (thanks to Jim Murphy of Real Philly History, Real Fast for this weird fact, as I had never even thought that the statue would be solid, since most things like this are hollow to avoid weighing as much as a whale).

Hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians walk past City Hall dozens of times a year. I do. Whether you're shopping downtown or at the Reading Terminal, or you have a court date at the courthouse behind the building, or you're taking photos at Love Park, many, perhaps most, Philadelphians walk by this giant citadel. It is pleasing to the eye, and it is simultaneously forboding.

The purpose of City Hall is pretty simple, it's where the mayor works. It's where the city government does whatever city government does.

As you may already know, you can walk right into the main European-style center courtyard, as there is a car-sized open archway on all four sides. Each of the archwayed tunnels has dozens of sculptures, many by one of the Calders, who also did the big William Penn statue.

And there's a bunch of cool stuff inside, including giant fireplaces, marble and mosaic, and fancy offices. There is, I imagine, a team of expert tradespeople who maintain this building both inside and outside, and honestly, it shows. The space is pristine.

There are tours you can take of the inside. The tower tour leaves the visitor center hourly on weekdays, takes about an hour and costs about $15. It ends on the observation deck under Penn's feet, where you can see nearly all of Philly: both rivers, the rowhouses, the Comcast Centers, and the plazas around City Hall.

Hero photo: Beyond My Ken via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.