The Pittsburgh Seminary wouldn't be your first place to expect to find a museum, but tucked in the basement of Long Hall is a rather unique museum in Pittsburgh called the Kelso Museum for Near Eastern Archaeology.
For those who like history, especially when surrounding the holy land, a visit to this small museum is a must.
For those who love museums, Pittsburgh is a great place to explore.
We have world class art museums like the Carnegie Museum of Art, the contemporary Mattress Factory, and the Warhol Museum. We have the fantastic Science Center and Children's Museum that are family oriented. We even have the Fort Pitt Museum and Heinz History Center that focus on the amazing history of Western Pennsylvania from the very first settlements to the present.
But you probably knew this already.
We could actually spend a lot of time writing about all of the more mainstream museums in Pittsburgh and barely begin to scratch the surface.
Today we wanted to go beyond those and talk about a few Pittsburgh museums that you would never expect to find here. These hidden (and not-so-hidden) gems are what make our museum scene truly special, and on your next trip out we highly encourage you to visit one of these unusual finds.
To get started, we're going to begin with a few you've likely heard of before, and then go down the rabbit hole to some really unique spots you can find only in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania! To read more about each museum featured in this list, click the link in the description to head to our full review.
Better Maid Donut relocated to 2101 Green Tree Road in 2026. This review was from a visit to their prior location.
To enjoy a creation from Better Maid Donut in Pittsburgh, you're going to have to set your alarm early. Very early.
This popular donut spot is known for its limited production and die-hard fans who will wait a half-hour or more for their devious creations. Put these two together and you'll quickly understand why this one often sells out within an hour of their ~6:30 am opening on weekdays and ~7:30 am opening on weekends.
As someone who is averse to getting up early in almost all cases, I've been trying (and failing) to visit Better Maid Donut for the better part of the last two years- through no one's fault but my own.
It wasn't until a late-spring morning, where the sunrise woke me up well before 6 am, that I realized the stars were aligning to make my visit to Better Maid Donut happen.
Close your eyes and imagine the perfect camp fire. If you're like us, and everyone in the United States without an Eastern European heritage, you are probably thinking of marshmallows roasting on a stick.
But if you are fortunate enough to have Eastern European family, especially those from Hungary, you may be envisioning something a bit different- a bacon roast.
The premise is exactly the same as making S'mores over a fire, but swaps the marshmallows for pork belly, and the graham crackers and chocolate for bread and vegetables, to make what could be the ultimate sandwich.
It wasn't until we were invited out to the North Side Hungarian bar and restaurant Huszar for their annual roast that we knew this was a thing, and we'll never look at camp fires the same way again.
If you're looking to beautify your home's outdoor space but want to shop somewhere more unique than just a big box store, Pittsburgh has plenty of local garden centers with much more interesting offerings. We've been busy checking them out to find the best- here are some of our favorites we've been to so far and the types of things you'll find at each.
Although banh mi sandwiches have been trendy for a while now and regularly pop up on all sorts of menus around the city, there are relatively few restaurants in the city solely dedicated to Vietnamese cuisine. Enter Banh Mi and Ti in Lawrenceville, a cute new spot with a self-explanatory name.
Round Hill Park in Elizabeth, PA, is a 1,100 acre park that takes on a familiar layout as far as local parks are concerned- namely being home to a large concentration of pavilions, unblazed hiking trails, and a few play areas for kids.
In fact, for the longest time we thought this was all that was available at Round Hill Park, and for that reason we made it the last of all of the Allegheny County Parks we visited.
But there was one thing we did not know that Round Hill Park has, and that is a working exhibit farm that is so impressive it is worth the drive to Elizabeth alone.
Altius on Grandview Ave in Mt Washington is a relative newcomer to the fine dining scene in Pittsburgh set among establishments such as Le Mont and Monterey Bay Fish Grotto.
With all of these restaurants, you're understandably paying a premium for the Pittsburgh city views, so we recently dined at Altius to see if the food and experience was worth the cost.
We're slowly working our way through the plethora of Asian restaurants in Squirrel Hill, and on our most recent trip we found ourselves at Taiwanese Bistro Cafe 33.
This spot on Shady Ave. right next to Starbucks is housed in what used to be the neighborhood laundromat, and it serves up a huge menu that's a mix of Taiwanese food as well as Americanized Chinese food.
With stiff competition just steps away, we wanted to find out how this one stacks up.
Pittsburgh's outdoor amphitheater, The Pavilion at Star Lake (formerly S&T Bank Music Park, KeyBank Pavilion, First Niagara, and Star Lake before that), is the preferred venue for many of the world's best bands and musicians as they make their touring stop in Pittsburgh.
But this pavilion, located about 45 minutes west of downtown Pittsburgh, has had some notoriety about it throughout the years as accessing the arena is quite difficult with its one and only road in and out. But since many of our favorite bands play there, we've sucked it up several times over the years to see performances with vastly different experiences.
As with everything, this review is not about the performance, but rather is about the arena itself. So, what did we think of Star Lake and what can you do to have the best experience when visiting? Read on!