Explore New York

St. Paul's Chapel is an Episcopal chapel of Trinity Church on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, built in 1766 in the Georgian style and the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan. George Washington worshipped here after his inauguration in 1789. It stood undamaged when the World Trade Center towers fell on 11 September 2001 and became a refuge for recovery workers.

Mercer Labs is a museum of art and technology at Church and Dey Streets near the World Trade Center, in part of the former Century 21 store. Created by Roy Nachum and Michael Cayre and opened in 2024, it has fifteen rooms of projections, holograms of suspended LEDs, spatial sound and a robotic arm that draws pictures in sand.

One World Observatory occupies floors 100 to 102 of One World Trade Center, the 541-metre tower designed by David Childs of SOM that opened in 2014 on the site of the destroyed Twin Towers. Since 2015 SkyPod elevators carry visitors up in under a minute to a glass-walled floor with views over Manhattan, the harbor and New Jersey.

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site remembers the 2,977 people killed in the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the six killed in the 1993 bombing. Two square reflecting pools designed by Michael Arad mark the footprints of the Twin Towers, with the names of the victims cut into bronze parapets. The museum below documents the attacks and their aftermath.

Federal Hall on Wall Street marks the site where George Washington took the oath as the first US president in 1789. The present Greek Revival building, designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, was completed in 1842 as the Custom House. The National Park Service runs it as a museum, with Washington's statue on the steps.

Trinity Church is an Episcopal parish church on Broadway facing Wall Street. The present Gothic Revival building by Richard Upjohn, completed in 1846, is the parish's third church on the site and was the tallest building in New York until 1890. Its churchyard holds the graves of Alexander and Eliza Hamilton.

The Museum at Eldridge Street occupies the Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side, built in 1887 by Eastern European Jewish immigrants and designed by the Herter brothers in the Moorish Revival style. After decades of decline it was restored by 2007; the sanctuary has a stained-glass rose window by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans from 2010.

The Brooklyn Bridge crosses the East River between Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Designed by John A. Roebling and completed under his son Washington Roebling with Emily Warren Roebling, it opened in 1883 as the longest suspension bridge of its time. A raised promenade for pedestrians runs above the traffic lanes between its two granite towers.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City is a museum and a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, opened in 1997. Its six-sided main building by Roche-Dinkeloo recalls the six million Jews who were murdered. Exhibitions trace Jewish life in the 20th and 21st centuries, before, during and after the Holocaust.

The Staten Island Ferry is a passenger ferry run by the New York City Department of Transportation between Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan and St. George on Staten Island. The 8.4-kilometre crossing of New York Harbor takes about 25 minutes and passes the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Manhattan skyline.

The Tenement Museum occupies two 19th-century tenement buildings at 97 and 103 Orchard Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where some 15,000 people from more than 20 countries lived between 1863 and 2015. Guided tours lead through restored apartments that tell the stories of immigrant families who lived there.

Brooklyn Bridge Park is an 85-acre waterfront park on the Brooklyn side of the East River, laid out by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates on former industrial piers. It runs 1.3 miles from Atlantic Avenue past the Brooklyn Bridge to the Manhattan Bridge, with lawns, playgrounds and sports fields on Piers 1 to 6.

Washington Square Park is a 4-hectare public park in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, run by NYC Parks. The marble Washington Square Arch, designed by Stanford White and completed in 1892, marks its northern entrance, and the central fountain plaza is a gathering place for students, musicians and street performers.

Governors Island is a 70-hectare island in New York Harbor, a short ferry ride from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. A US Army post from 1783 to 1966 and later a Coast Guard base, it opened to the public in 2005 and now has lawns, man-made hills with harbour views, historic officers' houses and the forts Fort Jay and Castle Williams.

The Whitney Museum of American Art collects 20th- and 21st-century American art and was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Since 2015 it has occupied a building by Renzo Piano at the southern end of the High Line, with galleries and outdoor terraces facing the Hudson. It holds a large Edward Hopper collection and stages the Whitney Biennial.

Museum of Illusions New York is an interactive museum at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street with more than 60 exhibits on optical illusions, perception and the brain. It opened in 2018 as part of a chain founded in Zagreb in 2015, inside the Neoclassical New York County National Bank Building of 1907, a city landmark.

The Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration fills the main building of the former immigration station in New York Harbor, through which about 12 million immigrants passed between 1892 and 1954. The building opened in 1900 and reopened as a museum in 1990; the restored Registry Room and the exhibitions tell the story of arrival. The island is reached by ferry.

Little Island is a public park on an artificial island in the Hudson River at Pier 55, off West 13th Street in Manhattan. Designed by Heatherwick Studio and opened in 2021, it rests on 132 concrete pot-shaped columns called tulips and has lawns, planted paths, viewpoints and a 687-seat amphitheatre.

The Flatiron Building is a 22-storey triangular skyscraper at the meeting of Fifth Avenue and Broadway by Madison Square, designed by Daniel Burnham and opened in 1902. Its limestone and terracotta facade narrows to a slim rounded tip; the building is being converted into apartments and is seen from the street.

The High Line is a 2.33 km elevated park on a disused freight railway viaduct on Manhattan's West Side, running from Gansevoort Street through Chelsea to 34th Street. It opened in stages from 2009, designed by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro with plantings by Piet Oudolf, and keeps lengths of the old rails among the plants.