Portal:Philadelphia/Intro

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is the sixth-most-populous city in the United States and the largest in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, both in area and population. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County. Philadelphia has the third-largest downtown residential population in the U.S., behind New York and Chicago. The Philadelphia metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in the U.S. by the official definition, with some 5.7 million people, though other definitions place it sixth behind the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington-Baltimore. Philadelphia is the central city of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area.

Philadelphia is one of the oldest and most historically significant U.S. cities. It was the nation's first capital. At the time of the American Revolution, it was the second-largest English-speaking city in the world, after only London. Into the first part of the 18th century, it was the country's most populous city and eclipsed Boston and New York City in political and social importance. Benjamin Franklin played an extraordinary role in Philadelphia's rise.