During the summer of 1793, a mysterious illness spread rapidly across the bustling city of Philadelphia, which at the time was the capital of the new nation. In the course of a few months, nearly 10% of the city’s residents died from yellow fever. This cataclysmic event inspired acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, but it also starkly revealed racial inequalities and inflamed polarization around immigration policy, political identity, and scientific knowledge. Learn how its lessons apply to today.

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This tour covers sites in Old City Philadelphia and will include visits to several houses of worship (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish) and entrance inside two of them. The tour also includes sites where religion was practiced and proclaimed in public spaces such as Washington Square and Carpenter’s Hall by a wide array of the city’s residents including enslaved and free people of African descent, white colonial elites, and itinerant preachers. We will uncover the interfaith roots of Philadelphia’s most cherished institutions such as America’s first university and first public hospital. The tour will explore the influence of William Penn’s religiously diverse colony on constitutional debates about religious freedom that continue to this day.

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