Rocky: From Kensington to the Art Museum Steps

Rocky opens on 25 November 1975 in the slums of Kensington, where Rocky Balboa fights Spider Rico at the Cambria Fight Club, nicknamed "The Bucket of Blood", a boxing ring inside a chapel. He is a journeyman boxer living in poverty who fights in small gyms and works as a collector for a loan shark. The film put his home at 1818 East Tusculum Street in the same neighbourhood; principal photography began on 9 January 1976, mostly around Philadelphia. The house is a private residence, so the pin only marks the street.

Location precision: The film's house is given as 1818 East Tusculum Street, but it is a private home; the pin marks East Tusculum Street, not the front door.

Once the champion Apollo Creed selects him, Rocky puts himself through several weeks of unorthodox training, with sides of beef for punching bags. The running montage takes him down 9th Street, where a vendor tosses him an orange. The street grew into The Italian Market after Italians began arriving around 1884, when Antonio Palumbo opened his boardinghouse to immigrants. Shops opened soon after, and many present vendors trace their businesses to those years. Newer immigrant-run businesses now stand beside the old Italian ones.

Visitor guidance: Walk 9th Street through the market.

Pat's, on the corner where South 9th Street, Wharton Street and East Passyunk Avenue meet, appeared in the 1976 film, and the restaurant later installed a plaque where the character stood. The Olivieri brothers, Pat and Harry, founded it in 1930 and are credited with inventing the cheesesteak. The movie's popularity made it a better-known tourist stop, and it is now on the Philadelphia Visitor Center's official Rocky bus tour.

Visitor guidance: Find it on the corner of 9th Street and East Passyunk Avenue; the plaque marks where the character stood.

Rocky's training ends with the run up the Art Museum's flight of stairs. The crew found the steps one night while scouting locations on a tight budget, and Garrett Brown's new Steadicam let the camera climb alongside him. Stallone first wanted Rocky to carry his dog Butkus up, but the bull mastiff proved too heavy. There are 72 steps in six sections, and visitors still mimic the run. Stallone later commissioned a bronze Rocky statue before Rocky III.

Visitor guidance: The museum's east entrance stairs are where visitors still mimic Rocky's run.

The night before the match, Rocky visits the Spectrum and begins to lose confidence. He hopes only to go the distance, which no other fighter has done. On New Year's Day Apollo Creed enters dressed as George Washington and then Uncle Sam. The Spectrum was represented in the movie as the site of the fight, although those sequences were filmed at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. The arena opened in 1967 at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, closed on 31 October 2009 and was demolished afterwards, so only the site remains.