Benjamin Franklin Museum

This guide to the Benjamin Franklin Museum in Philadelphia opens with a puzzle: not one drawing, painting, or written description of Franklin's own house survived him, even though he built it in 1763 and lived and died in it. It follows the house through his years abroad as a diplomat, his heirs' decision to tear it down in 1812, and the National Park Service dig in the 1950s and 60s that turned up only foundations and fragments with no blueprint to match. Inside, five rooms sort Franklin by character rather than by chronology, ambitious, curious, strategic, each built around real objects that belonged to him.