Visiting Wilmington, Delaware, United States: Top Sights on Foot

Looking for things to do in Wilmington, Delaware? The city brings together colonial history, religious landmarks, industrial heritage, historic neighborhoods, cultural buildings, and riverside parks. A free Neywo audio guide for Wilmington, Delaware includes 94 narrated places, giving you a richer way to explore the city as you walk.

What to See in Wilmington, Delaware

Old Swedes and the beginnings of Delaware

Holy Trinity Church, better known as Old Swedes, is one of Wilmington’s most important historic landmarks. Built between 1698 and 1699 on the burial ground of Fort Christina, the original 1638 Swedish settlement, it is one of the oldest surviving Swedish colonial buildings in America.

The church is built from local blue granite and bricks that once served as ballast on Atlantic ships. Its congregation worshipped in Swedish for decades before joining the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware in 1791 while retaining its Swedish identity. The surrounding churchyard contains more than 15,000 burials, adding another layer to the site’s long history.

Historic churches around Quaker Hill

Quaker Hill is one of Wilmington’s most distinctive historic areas, and the Friends Meetinghouse is at its heart. Quakers have gathered here for nearly three centuries. The present brick building was completed in 1817, replacing earlier meetinghouses from 1738 and 1748, and was designed to accommodate 700 people.

The meetinghouse also witnessed Wilmington’s involvement in the struggle for justice. When Garrett died in 1871, 1,500 mourners attended the funeral, and Lucretia Mott delivered the eulogy.

Grace United Methodist Church makes a dramatic contrast. Its green serpentine stone, quarried at Chadds Ford, gives the church an unusual color, darkened by coal soot and weather. Built in the High Victorian Gothic Revival style, it has twin towers, needle spires, Celtic crosses, and a tallest spire reaching 186 feet.

Old Asbury Methodist Church began in 1789 as Wilmington’s first Methodist congregation. Additions made in 1820, 1825, 1838, 1845, and 1875 produced the building’s distinctive L-shape. Its stuccoed-stone exterior and tall windows reflect a locally built version of the Italianate style.

Other churches add to the neighborhood’s architectural and cultural variety. Cathedral of Saint Peter is one of the stops on the Quaker Hill tour, while St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception reflects the history of Wilmington’s Irish immigrant community. Consecrated by Saint John Neumann in 1858, it is the only active church in Delaware founded by him.

Grand Opera House

The Grand Opera House has been part of Wilmington’s cultural life since 1871. Built by the Delaware Grand Lodge of Masons as both a Masonic Temple and auditorium, the four-story building is a notable surviving example of nineteenth-century cast-iron architecture in America.

Its Second Empire design was created by Baltimore architect Thomas Dixon. The cast-iron façade includes a central pediment with an Eye of Providence, a Masonic symbol. Over the years, the stage hosted opera, symphonies, melodramas, burlesque, vaudeville, and performances by figures including Ethel Barrymore, Buffalo Bill Cody, and John Philip Sousa.

Old First Presbyterian Church

At the edge of Brandywine Park stands Old First Presbyterian Church, a small brick building with a gambrel roof. Built in 1740, it is one of Wilmington’s oldest surviving structures.

The one-story church originally stood on Market Street between Ninth and Tenth Streets. During the British occupation of Wilmington after the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, it was used as a prison and hospital. The building later returned to worship before being moved to its present location in 1916 to save it from demolition.

Wilmington’s illustration studios

Wilmington has an important place in the history of American illustration. Frank E. Schoonover Studios was built in 1905 with funding from Samuel Bancroft, who supported Howard Pyle’s artistic vision. Pyle, often called the father of American illustration, taught here, and his students helped shape the look of American storytelling.

The building contains four studios with tall north-facing windows designed to provide steady working light. Frank E. Schoonover remained in Studio Number One for nearly seventy years and created more than 2,000 illustrations there.

The nearby Delaware Children’s Theatre occupies another building with a strong cultural history. Designed in 1893 by Minerva Parker Nichols, it was built as the New Century Club, a progressive women’s club associated with education, charity, and women’s suffrage. The Colonial Revival structure includes Palladian windows, a gambrel roof, and a built-in theatre. The Delaware Children’s Theatre was founded in 1973 and is a nonprofit community theatre dedicated to musicals for children and families.

St. Anthony’s and St. Hedwig’s

Wilmington’s churches also reflect the city’s immigrant communities. St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church was established in 1924 to serve the Italian-American community in Little Italy. Its Romanesque Revival design draws inspiration from the Basilica di San Zeno in Verona, particularly in the south façade, portico, and rose window.

St. Hedwig’s Roman Catholic Church represents Wilmington’s Polish heritage. Built in 1904 in the late Gothic Revival style, it has two eighty-foot towers capped with cross-gabled spires—the only twin towers on a church in Delaware. The parish grew from the Polish immigrant community that settled in Wilmington during the 1880s.

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church is another significant religious landmark: a historic Black Catholic parish that has served the Wilmington community for generations. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

Trinity Episcopal Church

Trinity Episcopal Church is a Gothic Revival landmark on North Adams Street. Its rough-cut Avondale limestone walls, pointed arches, buttresses, pinnacles, and tall spire give it a commanding presence.

The church was designed by Philadelphia architect Theophilus P. Chandler. Inside, carved wooden brackets shaped like angels support the nave, while twelve bronze bells remain in the bell tower. The tower was added in 1925, completing the church’s vertical profile.

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a historic country estate just inside Wilmington’s city limits. Its name refers to the high rocky outcrop on which the house was built. The estate combines a mansion dating from about 1844 with an early twentieth-century garden associated with Hugh Rodney Sharp and the Du Pont family.

The house is now a haunting ruin after decades of neglect, while the gardens were saved from redevelopment by a local preservation trust that acquired them in the 1990s. Together, they tell a story of changing fortunes, preservation, and landscape design.

Harlan and Hollingsworth Office Building

The Harlan and Hollingsworth Office Building is one of the remaining reminders of Wilmington’s shipbuilding era. Completed in 1912, it served as the administrative headquarters of a company that built more than 230 vessels.

The three-story brick building is particularly recognizable for its twin copper-faced bay windows at the front corner. Its original many-paned metal window sashes have survived, preserving a detail of the company’s industrial past.

Explore Wilmington with a self-guided audio tour

A Wilmington, Delaware self-guided walking tour lets you explore the city without joining a group. Neywo’s free audio guide includes four walking tours, one bus route, and one bike route, with 94 narrated places in total. Narration is available in 11 languages.

The walks cover different sides of the city:

• Du Pont’s Downtown: Banks, Chocolates and a Cast-Iron Opera House — 1.39 km, 83 minutes, 12 stops.
• Old Swedes: Where Delaware Began — 3.39 km, 115 minutes, 12 stops.
• Quaker Hill: Meetinghouses, Cathedrals and Merchant Rows — 2.73 km, 111 minutes, 12 stops.
• Brandywine Park: Illustrators’ Studios and a Moved Church — 3.04 km, 110 minutes, 10 stops.

For a longer route through the city, DART 9 down King Street: Wilmington by Public Bus covers 12.9 km in 55 minutes and includes 12 narrated stops. The bike route, Brandywine Park by Bike: Zoo, Studios and a Swinging Bridge, covers 3.3 km in 16 minutes and has 8 stops.

Download the Wilmington, Delaware audio guide

Download Neywo to explore Wilmington at your own pace. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, so you can follow a walk, bus route, or bike route with no group and no schedule.

After Wilmington, continue discovering the United States with audio guides for cities including Washington Dc, Providence, and Newport.