Where to Stay in Allentown, Pennsylvania

What is Allentown known for?

The Allentown Art Museum, the Da Vinci Science Center, the Liberty Bell Museum and the Museum of Indian Culture give a city of this size an unusually broad set of collections, and America On Wheels adds a transport hall to them. Baseball fills Coca-Cola Park. Allentown is also the seat of Lehigh County and the largest city of the Lehigh Valley, which sets its courts and offices at the centre of a region reaching well past the city limits.

What are the main landmarks in Allentown?

The Allentown Art Museum leads the collections. Beyond it the city keeps an unusual spread for its size, with the Liberty Bell Museum, the Museum of Indian Culture, the Da Vinci Science Center and America On Wheels each holding a subject of its own. Coca-Cola Park is the ballpark.

Church architecture marks the older streets, the Cathedral of Saint Catharine of Siena and Zion's Reformed United Church of Christ among the largest, with the Gauff-Roth House standing for the domestic register. Memorial Hall and the Martin Art Gallery finish the list.

What is the history of Allentown?

Allentown dates from 1762. The settlement grew on the floor of the Lehigh Valley before Lehigh County took shape around it, and the town became the county seat once that administration existed, which fixed the courts and the county offices here. Zion's Reformed United Church of Christ and the Cathedral of Saint Catharine of Siena mark the church-building that came with growth.

Industry followed. Manufacturing left museums behind it, the Saylor Cement Museum and America On Wheels among them, and the city around those works became the third-largest in Pennsylvania, behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Allentown outgrew the valley towns around it.

The city anchors the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area, and institutions such as the Allentown Art Museum and the Da Vinci Science Center took on a regional audience that no single town in Lehigh County could have supported alone. Coca-Cola Park belongs to the same scale. The Liberty Bell Museum and the Museum of Indian Culture sit inside a city whose own beginning is dated to 1762, while the Gauff-Roth House and the Kistler Residence stand for its domestic building.

Memorial Hall holds the civic end.

Where is Allentown?

Allentown occupies the broad floor of the Lehigh Valley, the largest city in that region and the seat of Lehigh County, with the rest of the valley's towns spread around it. Ground rises away on either hand. The city covers a compact area for its rank, third-largest in Pennsylvania yet built tight enough that its museums, its ballpark and its parks fall within a short drive of one another.

Bicentennial Park breaks the built ground.

What is the climate of Allentown?

The Lehigh Valley sets the terms. Allentown lies inland in the temperate band of the northern hemisphere, and a valley floor holds summer heat longer than the higher ground around it, so the warm months weigh more here than the calendar suggests. Winter is the quiet season.

Coca-Cola Park and Bicentennial Park fill through the warm half of the year, while the Allentown Art Museum and the Da Vinci Science Center take the cold months' traffic indoors.

How do you get to Allentown?

Arrival in Allentown is by road. Allentown sits at the centre of the Lehigh Valley, so the approach is by the valley's own road network rather than by one dominant corridor, and the county seat function keeps traffic pointed at the city from every direction. Coca-Cola Park is the exception on game days.

Its dates pull cars in from across Lehigh County, and anyone arriving then should allow more time than the map suggests. The rest of the year moves freely.