Yes, you can take a walking tour of Philly from the comfort of your home

Pinnacle Southeastern of Hilton Head Island has added Philadelphia to its roster of Historic Walking Tour cities, making it the fourth location where users of Apple and Android devices can download an app for a self-guided tour.

Users of the walking tour apps can pick any site to start from or even just listen to the two- to three-hour tours from home. Included in the apps are written and photographic history of each site, a city map and auto tracking on the map as walkers move around the city.

Jeff Wilson, president of Pinnacle Southeastern, said the newest app would include 51 sites of historic Philadelphia.

“We’ve got the Democratic Convention (coming up), we expect a lot of activity (in Philadelphia),” he said.

Wilson said he plans to create apps for 35 cities that have historic sites within walking distance, including cities in other countries, like Montreal and Quebec.

In addition to Philadelphia, there are already walking tour apps available for Charleston, Savannah and Beaufort. Prices for the apps vary.

“We’re doing Boston now, so we’re doing all the historic cities eventually,” Wilson said. “We’ve got New Orleans in the works. ... In fact, we’re even doing Havana, Cuba, which is going to be kind of unique because most people won’t be able to go there but (they) can download and listen to the histories of a lot of sites in Havana.”

It takes about three to four months to find and research the historic sites in cities and oftentimes locals provide assistance, according to Wilson. The apps for Savannah and Philadelphia are fairly new, but the Charleston app has been downloaded more than 20,000 times in the course of two years, he said.

Wilson said that he’s even considered a franchise option in order to create more apps.

“Let’s say we have the Internet domain for Montreal,” he said. “If someone wanted to do Montreal on their own and own it, we would work with them. So any city we approve, (the cities) would have to have 40 to 50 sites in walking distance, so that may eliminate cities like Atlanta and Chicago.”

The apps for Boston and New Orleans are set to launch later this year.

This story was originally published July 15, 2016 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Yes, you can take a walking tour of Philly from the comfort of your home."