Five boroughs, one grid, endless detail
An independent guide to New York — 68 landmarks, museums, parks, venues and neighborhoods, walked and written up first-hand.
The ones you came for
Statue of Liberty
A French gift that arrived in 214 crates and spent a year in pieces on an island nobody wanted. The ferry is the ticket — everything else is an upgrade.
Empire State Building
Built in 410 days during the Depression and empty for years afterwards. The 86th-floor deck is open air, which is what the newer decks in Midtown are not.
Central Park
Not a surviving piece of wilderness but a landscape built from nothing over sixteen years, including the streams, the hills and the woods. Free, and larger than you think.
Brooklyn Bridge
Fourteen years, three Roeblings and twenty-odd deaths to build. Free to walk, best at seven in the morning, and the direction you cross matters more than the time.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Two million objects across five thousand years, in a building you cannot see in a day. Pick three departments and accept that you are missing the rest.
Grand Central Terminal
A working commuter station that happens to be one of the great interiors in America. Free, open, and the ceiling is backwards on purpose — or by accident, depending who you believe.
New York by category
Day-by-day itineraries
Five Days in New York: Beyond the First-Timer List
With five days you can do the famous things at a civilised pace and still get into Brooklyn, Queens and the parts of Manhattan nobody photographs.
Four Days in New York with Children
New York with children is easier than it looks, as long as you accept that the day ends at four and that half of what you wanted to see is not happening.
One Day in New York: What Is Actually Possible
A layover, a business trip with a free afternoon, or a stopover on the way somewhere. Twenty-four hours is not much, but it is enough for one honest slice of the city.
Neighborhoods
The essentials
How to get in from all three airports, how the subway and the ferries actually fit together, and the history that explains what you're standing in front of.
From the guide
A Day in Queens: The Most Diverse Place on Earth
Two and a half million people speaking something like 160 languages, almost no tourists, and the best food in New York. One subway line covers most of it.
A Short History of Central Park, and the Village It Replaced
Every stream, hill and wood in Central Park was built. So was the decision to clear Seneca Village, a community of about 225 people, to make room for it.
How New York Invented the Skyscraper
It took a lift, a steel frame, a zoning law and a race between two former business partners. The story of how Manhattan came to look the way it does.