Explore New York

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.

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.

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 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.

Bryant Park is a 3.9-hectare park in Midtown Manhattan between 40th and 42nd Streets, behind the main building of the New York Public Library. Named in 1884 after the poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant, it was rebuilt in the 1930s and restored in 1988–1992, and has a central lawn, tree-lined terraces, movable chairs and a carousel.

Summit One Vanderbilt is an observation deck on the top floors of One Vanderbilt, a 427-metre skyscraper by Kohn Pedersen Fox beside Grand Central Terminal. Opened in October 2021, it spans floors 91 to 93 and combines mirrored rooms designed by Kenzo Digital, glass balconies that protrude from the facade, an outdoor terrace and glass lifts on the outside of the tower.

The Intrepid Museum is a military, aerospace and maritime museum aboard USS Intrepid, a Second World War aircraft carrier moored at Pier 86 on the Hudson River since the museum opened in 1982. Its flight and hangar decks display dozens of aircraft and the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and the pier holds a Concorde and the submarine USS Growler.

The Paley Museum is the New York home of the Paley Center for Media, founded in 1975 by CBS founder William S. Paley as the Museum of Broadcasting. Since 1991 it has occupied a building by Philip Johnson at 25 West 52nd Street. Visitors watch programmes from a library of about 160,000 television and radio shows, see exhibitions and attend screenings.

MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution in Long Island City, Queens, housed in a Romanesque Revival public school building from the 1890s. Founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss and affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since 2000, it shows changing exhibitions and hosts performances and summer music events in its courtyard.

Spyscape is an interactive museum about espionage at 928 Eighth Avenue in Midtown, with interiors designed by David Adjaye. Its galleries cover code-breaking, deception, surveillance, hacking and special operations, and visitors take tests of skills such as observation and risk-taking that end with a spy profile. A separate game zone, SPYGAMES, adds physical challenges.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a 21-hectare botanical garden in central Brooklyn, opened in 1911 beside Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum. It holds more than 14,000 kinds of plants in specialty gardens such as the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, the rose garden and the Cherry Esplanade, along with a conservatory.

The Roosevelt Island Tramway is an aerial cable car that crosses the East River between East 60th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan and Roosevelt Island. Opened in 1976 as a temporary link and rebuilt in 2010, its two red cabins travel about 960 metres beside the Queensboro Bridge, with views of the river and Midtown.

The Central Park Zoo is a 2.6-hectare zoo in the southeast corner of Central Park. A menagerie was kept here from 1864, and the present zoo opened in 1934; it was rebuilt with naturalistic habitats and reopened in 1988 under the Wildlife Conservation Society. Its exhibits are grouped around a central sea lion pool, with a children's zoo to the north.