Top places to visit

Grand Central Terminal is the 1913 Beaux-Arts rail landmark at 42nd Street, centered on a vast concourse beneath a celestial ceiling and integrated suburban train network.

The New York Public Library's marble Fifth Avenue research library combines Beaux-Arts ceremonial rooms, vast humanities collections and the Rose Main Reading Room.

Washington Square Park is Greenwich Village's civic square, organized around Stanford White's marble arch, a central fountain and a long tradition of performance and protest.

Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling Guggenheim building pairs a continuous ramp around a skylit rotunda with a major collection of modern and contemporary art.

The Whitney Museum presents twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art in Renzo Piano's Meatpacking District building, with large galleries and stepped terraces.

Governors Island is a car-free New York Harbor landscape of military landmarks, adaptive-reuse arts spaces, lawns, play areas and four engineered hills.

The Roosevelt Island Tramway carries aerial cabins beside the Queensboro Bridge, linking East 59th Street with Roosevelt Island above the East River.

Chelsea Market fills a former National Biscuit Company factory with food counters, specialist grocers and shops while retaining the Meatpacking District building's industrial fabric.

Little Island rises above the Hudson on sculptural concrete pots, supporting a rolling garden, river overlooks and two outdoor performance spaces at Pier 55.

Green-Wood is a 478-acre rural cemetery and arboretum of hills, ponds, monuments and mature trees, founded in 1838 on ground shaped by the Battle of Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Heights Promenade is a tree-lined pedestrian terrace above the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, opening broad views across the East River to Lower Manhattan.

Dyker Heights becomes a large resident-created holiday display each December, with illuminated houses, oversized figures and dense decorations concentrated in southwest Brooklyn.

Staten Island Children's Museum occupies 40,000 square feet at Snug Harbor, using hands-on environments for construction, performance, nature, games and imaginative play.

Family-friendly

Limited

Last verified

1 Jul 2026

Queens Museum occupies the former New York City Building in Flushing Meadows, pairing contemporary exhibitions with World's Fair archives and the vast Panorama model.

The New York Hall of Science turns a surviving 1964 World's Fair pavilion into a hands-on science center with interactive galleries, a design lab and outdoor science playground.

Family-friendly

Limited

Last verified

1 Jul 2026

Paley Park is a 4,200-square-foot Midtown pocket park where honey locust trees, movable chairs and a 20-foot waterfall create an outdoor room off East 53rd Street.

The Morgan unites J. Pierpont Morgan's richly decorated 1906 private library with rare manuscripts, drawings, books and Renzo Piano's modern gallery expansion.

The Frick Collection displays European paintings, sculpture and decorative arts in Henry Clay Frick's restored Fifth Avenue mansion, reopened in April 2025.

Socrates Sculpture Park is a five-acre Long Island City waterfront site where artists create and exhibit large outdoor works against the East River skyline.

The Noguchi Museum presents Isamu Noguchi's sculpture, furniture, models and drawings in galleries and a serene garden designed by the artist in Long Island City.

Fort Tryon Park's Hudson River terraces surround The Met Cloisters, where medieval architecture, gardens and art are assembled into an atmospheric museum complex.

Pelham Bay Park is New York City's largest park, spanning 2,772 acres of salt-marsh shoreline, forest, trails, historic estates and the crescent of Orchard Beach.

City Island is a narrow Bronx community in Long Island Sound whose low-rise streets, marinas, yacht clubs and seafood businesses retain a strong maritime identity.

Astor Court is the Bronx Zoo's formal historic entrance ensemble, where Beaux-Arts animal houses, sculpture and the sea-lion pool express the institution's original plan.