Pittsburgh sits at the confluence of three rivers in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania — the Allegheny and Monongahela flowing together to form the Ohio — and the triangular wedge of downtown between them has been called the Golden Triangle since the 18th century. The city grew from a French and then British fort into one of the great industrial centres of America, producing most of the steel that built the country. It was also, for much of the 20th century, one of its most polluted. Pittsburgh has spent the past forty years remaking itself, and the reinvention has gone better than almost anyone predicted.
What is left is a city of hills, bridges (more than any other city in the world), neighbourhood restaurants, and surprising museums. The Andy Warhol Museum is the largest single-artist museum in the United States. The Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in Oakland are among the finest in the country. Phipps Conservatory is a Victorian-era greenhouse that has reinvented itself as a centre for sustainable horticulture. The Monongahela Incline, the oldest continuously operating funicular in the USA, takes you up to a hilltop viewpoint from which the whole city and its rivers are visible in a single look.
Oakland — the neighbourhood east of downtown, centred on Forbes and Fifth avenues — is the city's intellectual heart, home to Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and those great museums. The Strip District, just northeast of downtown, is where the city's immigrant heritage is most alive: Polish delis, Italian bakeries, and a fresh fish market in a strip of 19th-century warehouses along the Allegheny. Lawrenceville, further upriver, is the neighbourhood where bars and restaurants have been opening fastest. And Point State Park at the tip of the Golden Triangle, where a fountain marks the exact confluence of the three rivers, is one of the most satisfying urban open spaces anywhere in the American northeast.
Pittsburgh is worth more than a stop on the way somewhere else. Give it three days and it will surprise you.