By Kate Springer, CNN
Standing in Penn Square, the heart of downtown Lancaster, it’s easy to imagine the scene that must have unfolded on these same streets nearly 250 years ago.
The American Revolution was in jeopardy.
It was September 1777, and the British forces had just defeated the Continental Army at the Battle of Brandywine.
With the British poised to capture Philadelphia — then the seat of the American government — members of the Continental Congress fled the city, racing westward in search of a safe place to regroup.
Their destination was Lancaster, a bustling market town about 70 miles to the west.
When the Continental Congress reconvened there on September 27, 1777, Lancaster unexpectedly became the de facto capital of the fledgling United States — albeit for less than 24 hours.
The delegates spent a hurried few hours assessing the war effort and finding ways to support Washington’s army before continuing farther west to York, where the mighty Susquehanna River offered more protection.
Though brief, Lancaster’s stint as the nation’s capital is just one example of how this community of roughly 58,000 people has long punched above its weight.
“It’s a very small city — it feels more like a town — but it has played key roles in many turning points in the country’s history,” local historian Thomas Englert, the president of Historic Lancaster Walking Tours, tells CNN Travel.
He points to Lancaster’s roles in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the abolitionist movement and the rise of American manufacturing, as well as its historic ties to farming.
Today, a mix of new museums, walking tours and thoughtfully adapted buildings is shedding new light on that history.
But visitors won’t find a destination unduly tethered to its past.
Lancaster has evolved into a small, cosmopolitan city with a thriving food, arts and culture scene that draws on its history while continually finding new ways to reinvent itself.
Lancaster’s early days
By the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Lancaster was a bustling market town that served as a gateway to the West.
Surrounded by some of the richest farmland in the region, Lancaster helped keep George Washington’s army fed and equipped, providing everything from food and clothing to rifles and manpower, Englert says.
Travelers and settlers passed through regularly, and new opportunities seemed to emerge with every westbound wagon.
The courthouse where the Continental Congress met on its way to York is long gone — it burned down in 1784 — but traces of Lancaster’s early history remain throughout the city center.
Penn Square marks the heart of downtown, encircled by buildings that span centuries of the city’s development.
Red brick is everywhere — underfoot and up the walls — from stately Georgian and Federal buildings to elaborate Queen Anne facades and Art Deco landmarks.
It’s actually remarkable that so much of it survived.
During the urban-renewal era of the 1960s and ’70s, several historic buildings were razed, including the grand Hotel Brunswick on North Queen Street.
By the late 1960s, Englert says, public sentiment began to shift.
“The city finally said, ‘No. No more tearing down — you’ve got to start reusing,’” he recalls of that time.
That resistance helped preserve many landmarks that dot the cityscape today, from the Georgian-style Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, founded in 1730, to the former home and studio of Lancaster-born artist Charles Demuth, whose works — from masterful watercolors to pioneering Precisionist paintings — helped put his hometown on the art map.
And then, of course, there’s Lancaster Central Market.
By 11 a.m. on a recent Friday, the soaring brick market hall was all abuzz with shoppers picking up everything from cream-filled “long john” donuts and whoopie pies to soft pretzels, soups, farm-fresh produce, butcher’s cuts, empanadas and locally roasted coffee.
Established in 1730 as an open-air market before it moved into its current Romanesque Revival building in 1889, it’s the oldest continuously operating public farmers market in the United States.
More than a place to shop, the market is a gathering place — somewhere to pick up groceries and gifts, catch up with neighbors or simply see the city in motion.
And for nearly three centuries, it has remained a constant as the city around it changed.
Come the mid-19th century, Lancaster had become an important center of abolitionist activity and a stop on the Underground Railroad, thanks in part to its proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line and a fierce community of abolitionists, explains Englert.
Shedding more light on that period is the new Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy, which opened in May 2026 after nearly a decade of planning and development.
Housed within Stevens’ former home and law office, where Smith also lived and worked as the house manager, the museum tells the stories of two prominent abolitionists who made their mark on Lancaster and the country at large.
Stevens went on to become one of the most influential advocates for abolition and equal rights in Congress, while Smith — whose legacy is less widely known — supported his political work as his close confidante and caregiver, all while building a successful career as a businesswoman, investor and landlord.
Walking through the museum, much of which extends underground, Lancaster’s abolitionist history really comes into focus.
It’s not a typical heritage house museum but more of an experiential mix of preserved spaces and stories, brought to life through arresting video experiences and audio storytelling.
Moving through each room, visitors get a clear sense of the risks faced by freedom seekers and those who helped them — and people like Stevens and Smith helped propel the country toward profound social and political change.
A city of reinvention
Fast forward to the late 19th century, and Lancaster staked its claim as a major manufacturing hub.
Spread out across the city, businesses like The Armstrong Cork Company, Hamilton Watch and the Lancaster Caramel Company — founded by Milton Hershey before he established Hershey’s Chocolate — brought the area decades of growth, while the glamorous Watt & Shand department store brought an upscale shopping experience to the heart of Penn Square.
Like many American cities, though, Lancaster struggled to find its feet as manufacturing slowed in the second half of the 20th century and retail businesses moved into suburban malls.
Many historic buildings sat underutilized or empty, providing ample opportunities for revitalization.
A complex of red-brick Armstrong Cork and Kerr Glass factories, for instance, found new life as the handsome Cork Factory Hotel, while the Lancaster Arts Hotel took a tobacco warehouse dating to 1881 and reimagined it as a boutique hotel and art gallery.
At Horse Inn, diners climb a narrow wooden staircase to what was once a Prohibition-era speakeasy hidden above horse stables, hence the name.
Today, the cozy wood-clad tavern serves elevated farm-to-table pub fare — think tenderloin tips and toast smothered in a rich demi-glace, house-pickled veggies and a glorious house burger — that changes daily, alongside creative cocktails enjoyed beneath exposed rafters and chandeliers made from wagon wheels.
Even the former Watt & Shand building finally found a new purpose. After the department store closed for good in 1995, the facade was eventually incorporated into a Marriott hotel and convention center that opened in 2009.
It was a highly controversial project at the time, but has since been credited with helping bring visitors and investment back downtown, says Englert.
And some old buildings are circling back to earlier roots. The soon-to-open Swan Hotel occupies a site where Frederick Hubley operated a public house as early as 1784, while local physician Clarkson Freeman built the current building in 1824.
It housed a tavern and hotel that operated under a series of names before becoming known as the Swan by the mid-19th century, remaining a fixture of Lancaster’s hospitality scene for several generations before shuttering in 1995.
Following an extensive restoration, it’s on track to debut as an 11-room boutique hotel this November that leans into the building’s heritage and character.
Revival from within
Elsewhere, preservation efforts saved entire neighborhoods.
Old Town, a residential neighborhood just southeast of Penn Square, was once a rough-and-tumble patchwork of taverns and brothels housed inside buildings dating to the 18th and 19th centuries.
By the 1970s, many of those historic buildings had fallen into disrepair, and much of the area was slated for demolition.
But a group of local investors, including businessman S. Dale High, saw potential in what remained.
Over the next two decades, dozens of historic buildings were gradually restored, while old horse stalls were converted into garages.
Eventually, Old Town emerged as one of the city’s most charming and architecturally distinctive enclaves.
“It was almost bulldozed,” Deborah Brandt, founder of Fig Industries, a Lancaster-based branding and marketing studio, tells CNN Travel.
“It survived because one person decided it needed to stay and believed he could do something with it. It’s people like that — private citizens who have invested their own money in Lancaster — who have driven so much of the change.”
For Brandt, that story reflects something larger about Lancaster.
“There are a lot of people here who really care,” she says.
Brandt experienced that firsthand when she returned to Lancaster in 2000 after a decade working with luxury brands in New York. At the time, she says, many people living in the surrounding suburbs rarely ventured downtown, which some perceived as unsafe.
“They didn’t know what was happening in the city,” she says.
Brandt began working on a direct-mail campaign designed to bring suburban residents downtown, an effort that eventually grew into Fig Industries and its quarterly magazines celebrating Lancaster’s independent businesses, restaurants and cultural scene.
“We realized quite quickly it couldn’t just be an external campaign to get people downtown,” she says. “It had to be an internal pride campaign, because people here didn’t believe in Lancaster City.”
Brandt says the changes happened gradually. By around 2009 or 2010, she could feel momentum bubbling.
“And then in 2015-2016, it started to become outwardly noticeable — people were beginning to say, ‘Hey, something’s happening in Lancaster.’”
‘A place of makers’
The arts scene was one of the first aspects of the city to take off, says Brandt.
“That was largely because it was inexpensive to live here, and as an artist, you could open a gallery and support yourself,” she says.
She points to the Fulton Theatre on Prince Street as the city’s cultural cornerstone.
A National Historic Landmark that dates back to 1852, the performance venue stages Broadway-caliber productions alongside children’s programming and educational initiatives — and it recently underwent a major expansion that included new performance and rehearsal spaces.
“It was always this kind of great little creative hidden secret here in Lancaster,” says Brandt. “And now it’s even better after the expansion.”
Just up the street, Gallery Row — a short yet charming strip of art galleries and creative businesses — was established by Gaye and Denny Cox in 2005, creating a de facto arts district for Lancaster.
Today, the row is home to longtime fixtures like Red Raven Art Company, which opened in 2006, alongside newer faces like Olivia’s Fine Art from local painter and textile designer Olivia Stoltzfus.
In her gallery-slash-studio, which opened earlier this year, Stoltzfus can often be found working on egg tempera paintings or weaving colorful textiles, with her finished works displayed alongside locally crafted woodwork.
About a block east, Lancaster Art Vault took over a former bank building and debuted in 2024. Now home to two dozen artists’ studios, the creative hub brings people together through rotating exhibitions, events and coworking spaces.
“There’s this heritage of working with your hands in Lancaster,” she says. “This is a place of makers, and there’s an appreciation for history that you might not find elsewhere.”
Global flavors find a home
You can’t talk about Lancaster’s evolution without mentioning the food scene.
In the past, if outsiders knew anything about the area’s culinary traditions, it was most likely tied to Pennsylvania Dutch cooking and nearby Amish Country — often equated with dishes like scrapple, pork roasts, chicken corn soup and shoofly pie.
While those traditions are still very much a part of the local identity, the downtown dining scene now feels more like a reflection of the city’s growing diversity.
Newcomers have been shaping Lancaster for centuries. Early European settlers were followed by Mennonite and Amish communities, while more recent waves of immigrants and refugees have arrived from Ukraine, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.
In recognition of its efforts to support immigrants from around the globe, Lancaster has been designated a “Certified Welcoming” city by Welcoming America since 2019.
“That’s why our food scene is so diverse,” says Brandt. “We’ve been welcoming, and now there are all these incredible cuisines that didn’t exist here before.”
Back in 2005, when Brandt started sending out Fig’s quarterly magazines, she says there were only a handful of restaurants downtown. Today, she estimates there are more than 150 restaurants and cafes.
Within a few blocks, diners can sample handmade Himalayan momos, Japanese ramen, Venezuelan arepas and contemporary Italian fare.
At Luca, chef de cuisine Nathan Flaim — a finalist for the 2026 James Beard Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic award — turns out wood-fired Italian flatbreads, expertly roasted chicken and handmade pastas made with ingredients sourced from Lancaster’s many farms.
Meanwhile, Norbu serves Bhutanese and Nepalese dishes rarely found elsewhere in Pennsylvania, and impossibly hip Hi-Fi Izakaya pairs neo-Japanese flavors, vinyl beats and imaginative cocktails.
And then there’s Southern Market. Designed in the fanciful Queen Anne style by local architect C. Emlen Urban, the red-brick building opened as a farmers’ market in 1888.
It was later converted into offices before being reimagined in 2022 as an international food hall, giving aspiring restaurateurs a place to try new ideas before opening their own places.
It’s a wonderful place to sample Lancaster’s diversity all at once: Under one roof, you’ll find everything from sushi and schnitzel to fried chicken, Moroccan shawarma, tacos, pho and Jamaican oxtail.
For Brandt, Southern Market’s reinvention mirrors the city itself.
“It used to be, come to see the Amish, and if you’re feeling courageous, you could go into the city for dinner,” says Brandt. “But now that has flipped.”
Nearly 250 years after the Continental Congress rushed through Penn Square, Lancaster is still finding new ways to punch above its weight.
But Lancaster’s transformation ultimately isn’t about any one restaurant, gallery or preservation project, she adds.
“It’s community spirit, it’s work ethic, it’s generosity. I really do think we’re extremely welcoming to innovation and new ideas,” she says. “We have a lot of history, and then there’s this underlying creative heartbeat.”
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