Where is the Liberty Bell?

The Liberty Bell is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Specifically, it is on display at the Liberty Bell Center, located in Independence National Historical Park on Market Street between 5th and 6th Streets, directly across from Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and signed.

The bell was originally cast in 1752 in London by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), and it cracked on its first test ringing in Philadelphia. Two local founders, John Pass and John Stow, recast it twice in 1753 and added the inscription Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof from Leviticus 25:10.

The 2,080-pound bronze bell hung in the State House steeple and was rung at major colonial occasions, including the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 8, 1776 (the bell's role in summoning citizens that day is part of tradition; the documentary record is incomplete). The bell developed its famous large crack at some point in the early to mid-nineteenth century and was retired from regular ringing in the 1840s after the crack widened. Abolitionists in the 1830s gave the bell its modern name, Liberty Bell, drawing on the Leviticus inscription and using the bell as a symbol of the antislavery movement.

After the Civil War the bell traveled the country on rail tours promoting national unity and reconciliation. It returned to Philadelphia and was displayed inside Independence Hall for most of the twentieth century. In 1976, for the U.S. Bicentennial, it was moved to a glass pavilion on Independence Mall, and in 2003 it was moved to its current home in the Liberty Bell Center, a glass-walled building designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson that displays the bell with views of Independence Hall behind it.

The Liberty Bell Center is open year-round, free to visit, and managed by the National Park Service. Approximately 1.5 to 2 million people visit each year. The bell weighs about 2,080 pounds, measures about 12 feet in circumference at the lip, and is made of about 70 percent copper and 25 percent tin with traces of lead, gold, silver, arsenic, and zinc. Its iconic crack is famous around the world.