State College is a university town in the geographic center of Pennsylvania, home to Penn State University and its Nittany Lions. On football weekends in autumn, the population swells as fans descend on Beaver Stadium, one of the largest stadiums in the world.
Beyond football, the town has a lively downtown along College Avenue with restaurants, bars, and bookshops catering to the student crowd. The Palmer Museum of Art on campus has a respectable collection, and the Penn State Creamery sells some of the best ice cream in the state — the lines can be long, but it is worth the wait. Tucked inside the mathematics building, the Octacube sculpture is the kind of unexpected delight that a good university town produces.
The surrounding Nittany Valley is beautiful rolling farmland ringed by forested ridges, with good hiking at Rothrock State Forest and excellent fly fishing on Spring Creek.