US Map / Cities / Philadelphia

Philadelphia Map

Laid out on the neck of land between the Delaware and the Schuylkill, Philadelphia held about 1.57 million people in 2024 and is the largest city in Pennsylvania.

Where is Philadelphia?

Philadelphia occupies the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, on the west bank of the Delaware River directly across from New Jersey. It is about 95 miles southwest of New York, roughly 100 miles northeast of Baltimore, and some 140 miles northeast of Washington — close enough to all three that the four run together as one built-up corridor.

Philadelphia at a glance

Philadelphia sits at No. 6 in the 2024 estimates, 99,248 people behind Phoenix and 47,260 ahead of San Antonio. Pittsburgh is the only other Pennsylvania city on the list. That is about 12% of Pennsylvania's 13.08 million residents inside a single municipal line. City and county are one outline here: Philadelphia County and the city limits enclose the same 1,573,916 people.

Philadelphia in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the only city in Pennsylvania that is also a county in its own right, so on the Pennsylvania county map the city and Philadelphia County have identical boundaries. Pittsburgh, about 300 miles west across the Alleghenies, anchors the other end of the state, and the capital, Harrisburg, sits between them on the Susquehanna. The Pennsylvania state page has the full outline.

Two rivers and the fall line

The city was deliberately sited on the strip between two navigable rivers, and its original grid still runs river to river. Philadelphia also sits on the fall line, the break where hard Piedmont rock gives way to the soft sediments of the Atlantic coastal plain: the Schuylkill drops over that step just above the city, which is as far upriver as ocean vessels could once come. Every big colonial port from here to Georgia sits on the same line, and the tidal Delaware carries ships to Philadelphia from Delaware Bay about 90 miles downstream.

Cities near Philadelphia

Along the same corridor lie New York, Newark, Jersey City, Baltimore and Washington. The Mid-Atlantic division page explains how the Census groups them.