At George Washington’s house in Philadelphia, volunteers take turns reading aloud from a book about slavery. “George Washington oversaw more than 300 enslaved people, nine of whom served in his Philadelphia household,” one volunteer tells tourists as they weave through an open-air monument where the presidential house once stood.

The writing should be on exhibit panels that once graced the monument’s red brick walls, but the Trump administration removed them in January as part of a push to restore “truth and sanity to American history”. Old City Remembers, a grassroots project led by local volunteers, is filling visitors in on the missing information during an ongoing legal battle to get the plaques reinstated.

The President’s House Site, which opened in 2010 on the footprint of George Washington’s Philadelphia home, says something of the sparring notions of American identity which the US is jostling in 2026.

America will celebrate its 250th birthday on Saturday, July 4, but it still can’t decide on its history.

The monument sits at one end of Independence Mall, a three-block plaza in the heart of Philadelphia, often described as “America’s most historic square mile”. At the other end is the Liberty Bell – a symbol of American freedom – and Independence Hall, where the US Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

The landmark agreement freed the American colonies from British rule and marked the birth of the United States as we know it. The plaza was filled with Maga hats and Stars and Stripes paraphernalia before this week’s July 4 celebrations, as Americans flocked to their country’s birthplace to mark the occasion.

At the Christ Church Burial Ground in one corner of the mall, a family poked their hands through the railings to point at Benjamin Franklin’s grave. “Thank you, sir,” said Faith Gelsthorpe, 39, prompting a ripple of “Thank you, sirs” from her husband and four children.

The Gelsthorpes, who run a tour company linked to their Liberty Baptist Church in Las Vegas, were in Philadelphia to teach their homeschooled children about the “biblical foundings” of their nation.

Teresa Alonzo, 63, a retired detective from the Los Angeles Police Department, took pictures outside Independence Hall on the other side of the mall with her husband, Jerry Gibson, 55. The pair wore matching “USA 250” T-shirts for their trip to Philadelphia.

“I’m proud to live in the United States. I think it’s the best country in the world, and being here just brings a lot of patriotism. Just knowing the history here and how we became what we are,” she said.

“We’re just proud to be an American at this time. We love our president, we think he’s doing a great job, he’s beautifying all our historical landmarks.”

America’s 250th birthday has become associated with Donald Trump, who is set to give a 45-minute speech as part of a patriotic extravaganza in Washington on Saturday featuring fireworks and musical acts.

The US president has embarked on a spring clean of the US capital before the event, with statues regilded and the Reflecting Pool sprayed with a coat of special “American Flag Blue” paint. The latter has not gone to plan, with the darker pool colour blamed for warming the water and attracting algae, which has clouded the pool and coincided with a series of duck deaths.

American flags, which are ubiquitous in the US in normal times, have been planted en masse before the nation’s important birthday. In central Philadelphia, there were flags draped outside banks and a local fire station, alongside posters for a “patriotic pet parade and costume contest”.

In the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House, a museum dedicated to the woman who designed the original American flag, William S Nacol III, 76, was sitting wearing a Stars and Stripes T-shirt, a Trump cap, and a diamante “III” necklace.

“I’m having a blast. I love the 250 and everything that goes with it,” said the retired jeweller from Louisiana. He had stopped by Philadelphia on a motorhome tour on his way to Washington for the July 4 celebrations.

Mr Nacol is a staunch Trump fan and said he admired the US president because “he’s a businessman, and he’s got everything done”.

The war in Iran has threatened to overshadow Mr Trump’s big day on Saturday, after a revival of missile attacks on June 25 effectively ripped up a recent ceasefire agreement. The two sides have agreed to halt strikes for now.

The days-long funeral service for Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader who was killed in the US and Israel’s initial strikes on Tehran on Feb 28, begins on July 4.

Some Trump supporters are unbothered. “[Iran’s] been bombing everybody for 47 years. All their neighbours hate them, and he put a stop to it,” said Mr Nacol. “Some of the actions may hurt a little bit, but overall they’re fabulous, and I think we got nothing else. I like him because he’s bringing peace to the world.”

Others are less sure. Stacey Vorhees, 46, a Trump voter who runs a McDonald’s restaurant in Wapakoneta, Ohio, said the war has dented her view of America.

“I’m a business owner, and I’ve seen the first-hand effects of gas and food prices that are affecting my industry, and so I would love for this to come to an end, so that we can have things come back to at least a little more stability in the economy,” she said.

“I have many consumers that are literally just shopping for deals only, because things are so expensive. People that aren’t going away on vacations are staying close to home because of the prices of gas, plane tickets.

“As Americans, we have lost our way in our matters of faith, morals, and even being unified for a common cause,” said Ms Vorhees. “I mean, you look just at the elections, no matter which side you’re on, and we’re divided. And a house divided can’t stand.”

She was speaking from the historic Elfreth’s Alley, a cobblestone lane with houses dating back to the early 1700s, which were dotted with “We stand with Greenland” signs, Union Flags and a flyer for a Benjamin Franklin lookalike contest on Friday night.

A billboard on the side of one of the houses advertised a “rare opportunity” to buy a home “continually occupied since the time our allegiance was to the King”.

Caroline Morse, 38, originally from Leamington Spa in the UK, who moved to California a decade ago, was taking pictures on Elfreth’s Alley with her husband on a stop in Philadelphia to see the Phillies baseball stadium.

The stay-at-home mother said that while American-British hostilities have all but disappeared 250 years after the American Revolution, a broader anti-immigrant sentiment in the US today means even she faces animosity.

“I’ve been living here 10 years. I’m very proud to be living in America. We believe in the people of America, but we don’t really believe in the government right now. And racism has just got worse,” she said.

“Even I’ve been told to go home when they find out I’m British, and I’m quintessentially a white woman with blonde hair. It’s very intolerant at the moment.”

Just 53 per cent of Americans say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American, according to Gallup polling published on Monday. It is the lowest share since the survey firm began asking the question in 2001, and pride has fallen the most in the past year among women, those between the ages of 18 and 54, and people of colour.

Outside Philadelphia’s historic centre, locals were apathetic about the 250th birthday and were counting down the days until Mr Trump leaves the White House.

Philadelphia is a Democratic stronghold where black, Latino and Asian people make up 63 per cent of the population. Despite Thomas Jefferson writing that “all men are created equal” from a rented room in the city, more than a fifth of residents live below the poverty line, and the sprawling metropolis has been blighted by a housing and homelessness crisis for decades.

Tracey Johnson, 62, a retired medical assistant who was born and raised in Philadelphia, said he hoped things would get better once “you know who is out of office”.

“To feel like an American in this day and age, it is questionable... The war is a big issue, and so many other things that our current president is handling,” he said outside Philadelphia City Hall, where police cars burned in 2020 as part of mass protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd.

“The LGBTQ community and their rights, the gas prices, food prices, all the above. I mean, homelessness, it’s a big issue in the world today, and I don’t think our current administration is doing a great job.”

David Puryear, 77, a saxophonist who plays his alto sax on the corner of 4th St and Market St, said the 250th birthday should give pause for thought on whether America has achieved its founding ambition of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all.

“America is getting ready to celebrate 250 years of independence, and everybody’s still not free,” he said. The artist, who goes by the musical name “Etta’s Baby Boy”, turned down an offer to play the Star Spangled Banner, the US national anthem, at a nearby venue on July 4.

“There’s nothing to celebrate now, because I mean, it’s not equal. And until it is, I think we’ve got to keep our voice and our opinion and opposition [heard]”, he said.

“Humanity has a say in this, but as it goes right now, it’s all about the one per cent. We’ve got to talk about the Jeff Bezoses and all them. But at the end of the day, who are they? They’re still humans, who care nothing about me or anybody. What do they care about? Their bottom line, that dollar. And they got to keep the dollar and keep their power for them.”

Cherelle L Parker, Philadelphia’s mayor, has promised to invest $2bn (£1.5bn) over four years to improve the city’s housing crisis. A new Riverview Wellness Village will also receive $167m (£122m) from a share of national opioid settlement funds over the next half-decade to address a fentanyl epidemic in the local Kensington neighbourhood.

The city has clashed with the federal government in recent years over its sanctuary city status, meaning it limits cooperation with US immigration and customs enforcement to act as a welcoming city for immigrants. During the first Trump administration, the federal government threatened to withhold grants for Philadelphia on this basis, although the move was repeatedly struck down by courts.

In the meantime, tourism has continued to contribute around $7bn (£5.1bn) a year to the local economy of Philadelphia, which is the sixth-largest city in the US. That received a boost in 2017 after the Museum of the American Revolution opened. A stone’s throw from the missing plaques at George Washington’s house, it hopes to provide a balanced view of the bloody battle that led to the country’s origins.

The museum has seen a slight uptick in visitors before the country’s semiquincentennial. Dr Tyler Putnam, the head of gallery interpretation at the museum, said visitors could take lessons about American identity from the architects of its independence, who were themselves unsure of what those words meant.

“What did being American mean – that was something that even guys who got out those quill pens and signed those documents did not agree among themselves,” he said.

America’s split from the British Empire in 1776 and subsequent declaration of independence was, in many ways, a bold political experiment influenced by Enlightenment principles. As Washington himself put it: “The destiny of the Republican model of Government [is] staked... on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

“Did it work?” said Dr Putnam. “[That] would be a great question for people to ask this birthday, or to leave this museum asking: if we like to pride ourselves on being this great experiment, how’s the experiment going?

“I think birthdays are a time to celebrate, but also be self-critical, and the mood you’re in might depend on what year you’re confronting or what your life has been like that year.”

At America’s bicentennial in 1976, the Vietnam War had just finished, political trust had been hammered by the Watergate scandal two years earlier, and the US was grappling with a period of “stagflation”.

In a special July 4 ceremony that year, Gerald Ford, then president, opened the Century Safe – a time capsule that had been buried 100 years earlier – hoping it might provide some insight into the nation’s soul after recent turmoil.

“As we look inside this safe, let us look inside ourselves. Let us look into our hearts, and into our hopes,” he said. “And now let’s open the doors.”

The president’s optimism wavered when the objects inside the safe were revealed: a photograph of an early statesman, autograph albums, an ink stand.

Whoever graces the White House in 2276 might have a similar reaction. Across the lawn from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, a forklift worker was rehearsing picking up an “America250 Time Capsule” that would be buried on Saturday and sealed for another 250 years.

A plaque next to the 900lb steel cylinder said it contained “treasures” from each of the 50 US states, but its website divulged further details.

Besides a diamond from Arkansas and an AI-generated vision of the future from California, many states chose to send letters from their governors and American challenge coins.

People who walked past the capsule on Tuesday afternoon appeared unfazed and were more interested in a nearby Benjamin Franklin lookalike doing keepy-uppies as part of a skit for the Fifa World Cup.

Locals don’t plan to watch the selected snapshot of 2026 history being interred on July 4. “I’ll just be doing the American things, doing the barbecue, watching the World Cup,” said Janine Irons, 32, a nurse who lives locally.

And which spot on Independence Mall have local authorities chosen to bury the America250 Time Capsule? Next to the loos.

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