Why visit
Fort Tryon Park occupies high ground above the Hudson River in northern Manhattan. The Olmsted Brothers designed its terraces, drives, lawns, wooded slopes and Heather Garden in the 1930s on land donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr., preserving broad views toward the Palisades across the river.
What to see
The Met Cloisters opened in 1938 within the park. Architect Charles Collens assembled a building around medieval architectural elements, including cloisters from French monasteries, creating galleries whose stone passages, chapels, courtyards and gardens provide historical scale and setting for European art from roughly the twelfth through fifteenth centuries.
Plan your visit
The collection includes sculpture, stained glass, metalwork, manuscripts and the celebrated Unicorn Tapestries. Plants documented in medieval sources grow in enclosed gardens beside carved columns and arcades, so the museum links art, architecture and horticulture while the surrounding park extends that constructed sense of retreat into the Manhattan landscape.
