The 35 best things to do in New York City

Price: £

Nearest metro: Smith 9th Streets

Picasso, Dali, Kahlo, Matisse and Warhol are just a few of the names you’ll find at the Museum of Modern Art, which is flooded with natural light and an absolute pleasure to wander through. Keep an eye open for outré pieces by New York artists, such as Dan Graham’s two-way mirror glass pavilion installation in the sculpture garden. In-house restaurant, The Modern, serves up edible art on a plate that tastes terrific. If you want a less formal dining experience, try to nab a seat at the bar, particularly at lunch.

Insider tip: Head to the fifth floor right away. The most popular galleries – those with Pollock and Warhol, et al – are at the top. Then work your way down.

Website: moma.org

Nearest metro: 5th Ave/53rd St 

Prices: ££

The Whitney, once one of the most overlooked of the major New York art museums, is now housed in a dynamic Renzo Piano-designed building and getting the attention it deserves. The 18,000-piece collection of mostly 20th-century art from artists like Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, Max Weber and Jackson Pollock makes the museum a beacon of modern American art history.

Insider tip: Time your visit at sunset and head to the top-floor terrace for wonderful orange-hued views of lower Manhattan. 

Website: whitney.org

Nearest metro: 14th St/8th Ave

Prices: ££

The Frick tends to get overlooked – but it shouldn’t. This Upper East Side art institution recently re-opened after a massive renovation. Housed in a mansion with a Roman atrium, it offers a great collection of works by the likes of Goya, Velázquez, El Greco, Rembrandt and other renaissance masters. Most are still hung the way they were when the collector, Mr. Frick, was alive.

Insider tip: Go to one of the Frick’s regular intimate salon evenings with classical music concerts, dance and discussions with artists, scholars and writers.

Website: frick.org

Nearest metro: 68th St-Hunter College

Prices: ££

An architectural game changer? That’s one way of describing this Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building. Built in 1959, the Guggenheim Museum is an artistic object in itself. While the building is one of the chief attractions here, the great art just seems like a bonus. There are 700 works of art by over 300 artists, including Kandinsky and Picasso, among others. 

Insider tip: Even if you don’t intend to see the art, make sure you visit the building itself for some wonderful photo opportunities – especially inside, with views of eloquent inverted coil wending its way up the curvature of the building. 

Website: guggenheim.org

Nearest metro: 4, 5, 6 to 86th Street

Prices: ££

The Metropolitan Museum’s centre of medieval art boasts interiors filled with Madonna and Child sculptures, paintings from the Middle Ages, and tapestries of slaughtered unicorns. However, many locals and visitors take the 40-minute subway ride (and subsequent 10-minute stroll through Fort Tryon Park) to get to the Cloisters because of the peace and tranquility it affords.

Insider tip: If you visit the Met, you get free same-day admission to the Cloisters (or the other way around), so make a day of it and hit both museums in one day.

Website: metmuseum.org

Nearest metro: Dyckman St

Prices: £

Set in a late-19th-century Romanesque Revival school house, hence the name (Public School 1), Moma’s Queens branch is an underrated museum housing scores of thought-provoking contemporary art. Time your visit for Saturday afternoon so you can hit the weekly ‘Warm up’, a DJ-ed party that gets the art crowd hopping.

Website: moma.org

Nearest metro: Hunters Point Ave/Court Square

Price: ££

Perhaps one of the most iconic libraries in the world, the main branch of the New York Public Library is a fun (and free) place to wander around. Head up to the famed first-floor Main Reading Room and marvel at a two-block-long space, 52-foot-high ceilings, bathed in natural light, where scholars and the intellectually curious comb over documents from the cellar archive where over four million books are stored. 

Insider tip: Don’t miss the two stone lions acting as sentries that bookend the steps leading up to the entrance.

Website: nypl.org

Nearest metro: 42nd St/Bryant Park

Price: Free

Arguably the most famous bridge in the world, the Brooklyn Bridge is not only aesthetically pleasing, it makes for a great walk. The 271-foot-tall neo-gothic arches are certainly the bridge’s trademark, but strolling along the elevated pedestrian walkway (starting in Brooklyn and walking toward Manhattan) is a must for any visitor. When it was completed in 1883, it not only united the two, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world at almost 7,000 feet. The bridge’s construction was overseen first by John Augustus Roebling and then his son, Washington. But after Washington suddenly died, his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, took over and finished the job, a fact that has been largely lost to history.

Insider tip: Go early to skip the crowds on the bridge.

Nearest metro: Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall (Manhattan); York St, High St (Brooklyn)

Price: Free

What is this, Grand Central Station? We’ve all asked this question when we’re in a suddenly and unexpectedly busy place. Now go see where it originated and you’ll catch the true meaning of this bustling transportation hub, as a whopping 750,000 people pass through the station every day. Yes, you say, it’s only a train station. But quite a majestic one indeed. Roman-style vaults may impress, but visitors are awed by the starry sky of an arched ceiling in the main ticket hall. Built in 1913, Grand Central is the dream of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Unlike once-glorious, now decrepit Penn Station, Grand Central is still shining like the day Vanderbilt conceived it.

Insider tip: It’s a busy transit hub, so be sure to step out of the flow of commuters on the way to their trains for marveling (and photographing) the building.

Website: grandcentralterminal.com

Nearest metro: Grand Central/42nd St

Price: Free

It’s not New York’s biggest cathedral (that honour would go to St. John the Divine), but St Patrick’s is the city’s most famous and arguably most beautiful. This bewitching neo-gothic structure makes for a nice architectural contrast with the Art Deco-clad Rockefeller Center across the street. Completed in 1878, the cathedral is one of the country’s most identifiable churches. Up to 2,200 people can fit inside and the interior has been packed to take part in requiem masses for notables such as Babe Ruth, Celia Cruz, Robert F. Kennedy, Joe DiMaggio and Andy Warhol. 

Insider tip: Be sure to check out the Pieta, three times larger than Michelangelo’s version in the Vatican, and sculpted by Araldo Perugi.

Website: saintpatrickscathedral.org

Nearest metro: 5th Ave/53rd St

Price: Free

It all began with a long stretch of abandoned elevated railroad track. Built in the 1930s, the track was used to transport cargo from the piers along the Westside at 34th Street to downtown Manhattan until 1980. But the track fell into disarray and a movement to turn it into a park picked up steam, aided by the support of celebrities. And finally in June 2009, the High Line Park officially opened, becoming only the second elevated park in the world (after Promenade Plantée in Paris).  Since opening, the High Line has become an instant Big Apple classic site, wowing visitors and locals with its cool design (it goes right under the Standard Hotel) and incorporating much of the natural surrounding.

Insider tip: You can pair a High Line walk with a visit to the Whitney Museum of American Art, located right at the beginning of the path.

Say you live in ‘the Village’ and locals who know their New York neighbourhoods will swoon. This leafy area, filled with historic brownstones, stretches from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River, W. 14th to Houston Streets. There are actually two neighbourhoods that make up the Village. The names ‘Greenwich Village’ and ‘West Village’ are generally interchangeable, but locals use West Village to demarcate the more tranquil section between Sixth Avenue and the Hudson River, while Greenwich Village is generally referred to as the area centred around Washington Square and the intersection of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets.

There are few places in New York City as emotionally, politically and patriotically loaded as this spot in lower Manhattan. The memorial consists of the footprints of the two towers, today, two giant reflecting pools with the names of the victims inscribed along the periphery. Another powerful monument to the victims who lost their lives on 11 September, 2001 is inside St. Paul’s Chapel, the diminutive church from 1766 across the street from the reflecting pools, houses photos, fliers, and mementos related to the attacks.

Insider tip: Fans of contemporary architecture should take a look at the new Santiago Calatrava-designed subway station that looks like the skeleton of a stegosaurus. 

Website: 911memorial.org

Nearest metro: World Trade Center; Chambers St; Wall St; Fulton St

Price: Free

Sad as it is to say, there are few obvious sightseeing opportunities in the borough of Staten Island. One of them, though, is to take the free ferry from Manhattan. It provides a great view of the lower Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty. Over 70,000 people per day take the five-mile, 25-minute scenic ferry ride. You should too. Ferries leave every 30 minutes. 

Insider tip: The Staten Island neighbourhood at the ferry dock, St. George, boasts cafés and restaurants, so grab a drink while you wait for your return journey.

Website: siferry.com

Nearest metro: Whitehall St/South Ferry

Price: Free

For more than 60 years from 1892, Ellis Island served as one of the main immigration processing centres in the United States. It’s estimated that 40 per cent of living Americans today can trace at least one ancestor whose gateway to America was through this island just off the coast of Manhattan, many escaping war and famine. Today the place is a fascinating monument to human immigration. Visit the restored Main Arrivals Hall and the museum which is a self-guided tour through the complex’s history.

Insider tip: At the American Family Immigration History Center, visitors can do multimedia searches through the archives. Who knows? You might just find a lost ancestor.

Website: ellisisland.org

Nearest metro: Ferry terminal from Battery Park

Price: Free

Every attraction and activity in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets and styles, from world-class museums to family-friendly theme parks – to best suit every type of traveller. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest openings and provide up to date recommendations.