New ‘Portal’ Opens in Philadelphia, Connecting Residents to Cities Around the World With Identical Installations
The looming sculpture features a small camera above an eight-foot-tall screen, which displays live video from Lithuania, Poland and Ireland
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A virtual portal has opened in Philadelphia, spreading the City of Brotherly Love’s charm around the world. The interactive art installation connects viewers to other cities with identical portal sculptures, which function as massive public webcams. Each one is equipped with a small camera above an eight-foot-tall screen displaying live video.
“It reminds me of the scary movie The Ring, like the girl is going to climb out of it or something like that,” Brett Sommerer, a resident of northeast Philadelphia, tells WPVI-TV’s Briana Smith.
Philadelphia’s portal connects to a new city every three minutes, rotating between Vilnius, Lithuania; Lublin, Poland; and Dublin, Ireland, according to a statement from Portals.org. Soon, new cities will be added to the list.
Located in Philadelphia’s LOVE Park, the portal went live at a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this week. Video posted to social media shows Dubliners waving Irish Flags and holding signs that read “Hello Philly!” On the American side, Philadelphians cheered and waved to their connections across the pond.
The event even connected one pair of siblings. Alexander Levengood, who lives in the Philadelphia area, went to the unveiling to see his younger sister, Sophie, who happened to be in Dublin.
“It was such a crazy coincidence. Out of all places, there’s one in Philadelphia and then one in Dublin,” Levengood tells the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Rita Giordano. “I love [my sister] to death, so to see her was really special and a very, very cool experience, one that I’ll remember.”
Dublin City Council are delighted to announce the Dublin Portal is now linked to Philadelphia in the USA. The Portal is Philadelphia is located in the city's JFK Plaza. The livestream will now alternate every 3 minutes between Dublin, Vilnius, Lublin and Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/90KhztUC96
— Dublin City Council (@DubCityCouncil) October 22, 2024
The portal arrives in preparation for the city’s celebration of America’s semiquincentennial—the nation’s 250th birthday—in 2026. Michael Newmuis, the city of Philadelphia’s 2026 director, spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, telling attendees that the sculpture “is so much more than just art—it’s a global conversation starter.”
“It’s building bridges instead of walls,” he added. “And with today’s launch of the portal, Philadelphia is not just the city of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia is the city of global love.”
The portal project began in 2021, when Lithuanian founder Benediktas Gylys first connected residents of Vilnius and Lublin through a screen.
“This is my life’s mission, my dream—to build more sculptures in all countries around the world so that we could all meet as humankind together and recognize that we are all inseparably connected, flying on this tiny spaceship called Earth,” Gylys told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sheena Goodyear earlier this year.
Before it arrived in Philadelphia, this portal sculpture was stationed in New York’s Flatiron District, where it debuted in May. However, the installation was temporarily shut down after a string of inappropriate incidents on both sides of the screen, later re-opening with limited operating hours. The Big Apple’s portal, which had been created as a short-term installation, officially closed on September 2.
In Philadelphia, a minor hiccup arose when visitors noticed a crack on its screen, spreading photos of the damage through social media. City officials say that the crack was not caused by vandalism but by screws that were too tight, according to CBS News’ Alexandra Simon.
“Like the Liberty Bell, there is a small crack,” said Newmuis at the ceremony. “But that glass is not going to stop us in Philadelphia from making history.”
NBC10’s Siobhan McGirl reports that a new screen has been ordered, and a cracked screen has not stopped Philadelphians from coordinating jumps and waving to new friends across the world.
The Portal will remain in Philadelphia’s LOVE Park until November 7, when it will be moved to a new location in the city.