New York

The 86th-floor deck is an open parapet with no roof, so in winter the wind reaches you unbroken. The 102nd sits behind glass, warmer but with narrower windows. On a foggy morning in 1945 a B-25 bomber flew into the 79th floor.

The 1858 design sank the cross-town roads below grade, so traffic passes beneath your feet as you walk. Black rock between the lawns is not landscaping but the Manhattan schist underneath. End to end is four kilometres, over an hour of walking.

Start on the Brooklyn side and walk towards Manhattan. Go the other way and the skyline sits behind you the whole time. In 2021 the bike lane was moved down onto the roadway, which left the timber promenade above to people on foot.

A fixed ticket price arrived in 2018. Only New York State residents and students from the two states beside it pay what they wish. The glass-walled hall by the Egyptian wing holds the Temple of Dendur from the upper Nile. The roof garden opens in warm months.

Crown tickets are sold apart from the rest and run out months in advance. Boats leave from Battery Park alone, calling at Liberty Island and then Ellis Island. If seeing it from the water is enough, the Staten Island Ferry costs nothing.

The station opened in 1913. Constellations on the main concourse ceiling run backwards, explained ever since as the sky seen from a god's side. Under the low arches by the Oyster Bar, a word spoken into one corner arrives at the opposite one.

A freight viaduct from the 1930s was never pulled down. The deck opened as a park in 2009 and now runs from the Meatpacking District up to Hudson Yards. Stairs and lifts come every few blocks only, so getting back down where you climbed on takes a walk.

Zoning here obliges owners to hang lit signage, which is why no facade goes dark. The costumed characters who pose for photographs name no price beforehand and ask once the picture is taken, so settle the figure before the shutter.

Ride the subway until the line runs out and the sea is waiting. The Cyclone, a wooden coaster from 1927, still turns on the same lot. A boardwalk runs behind the sand. Through winter most of the shopfronts are shut and only the walk stays open.

The footprints of the two towers stayed exactly where they stood and became falling water. Names on the bronze parapet are grouped not alphabetically but by who worked and stood together. On a person's birthday a white rose is set into the cut letters.

On 53rd Street in Midtown. The 5th-floor galleries hold the famous Van Gogh and Picasso canvases, where the crowd stands several deep; head straight up there at opening to get close. Monet's Water Lilies take over an entire room.

Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral, opened in 1959. The order the design intends is to take the elevator up first, then walk down the sloping ramp, looking at the art on the way.

West of Central Park. The blue whale model hanging in the Hall of Ocean Life is 29m long. The dinosaur fossils are gathered on the 4th floor, and the Gilder Center, opened in 2023, added a new Columbus Avenue entrance through a cave-like, curving atrium.

The observation decks atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza. From the Empire State Building you cannot see the Empire State Building; from here it stands square in the southern view, and Central Park lies as one rectangle to the north.

It leaves from Whitehall Terminal at Manhattan's southern tip and the ride is free. Boats run 24 hours and the crossing takes about 25 minutes. Stand on the right-hand side going out and you pass closest to the Statue of Liberty.

Immigrants were inspected here from 1892 to 1954. The same ferry ticket as the Statue of Liberty covers the stop. The Registry Room on the 2nd floor once processed thousands daily. Visitors can search ship manifests for an ancestor's name.

The Metropolitan Museum's branch in Fort Tryon Park at Manhattan's northern tip. It was built from cloisters taken from medieval European monasteries and houses the Unicorn Tapestries. Walk up the hill from the A train at 190th Street.

At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, with two stone lions guarding the steps. The Rose Main Reading Room on the 3rd floor sets long wooden tables under a painted ceiling, and entry is free, so visitors can step in quietly.

The park at the heart of Greenwich Village, its marble arch, completed in 1892, closing off the foot of Fifth Avenue. Street performers work the fountain, and at the stone tables in the southwest corner chess players take on all comers for stakes.

Since 1976 an aerial tram has run from Second Avenue and 59th Street over the East River to Roosevelt Island. It costs the same fare as the subway, and the short ride glides beside the Queensboro Bridge with the river below your feet.

The old warehouse quarter on the Brooklyn side under the Manhattan Bridge. On cobbled Washington Street the bridge's towers frame the Empire State Building, so people line up to take the picture. The riverside park keeps a carousel inside a glass box.

In the Bronx; the current ballpark opened in 2009. It stands right outside the 161st Street subway station. Monument Park behind centre field gathers plaques of club heroes, and on game days it is open only in the early window after the gates open.

Climb out at the last stop of the 7 train into Queens' Chinese neighbourhood, where most signs are in Chinese. It is larger than Manhattan's Chinatown, and the basement food courts pack stall after stall of noodles and dumplings from across China's provinces.

A park opened in 2021 at Pier 55 on the Hudson, its hills and lawns raised on tulip-shaped concrete piles. You pay nothing to enter, and the lower tip of the High Line is minutes away on foot. Climb the western hill to look across the river to New Jersey.

Boats from the Battery Maritime Building at Manhattan's tip cross in a few minutes. The former military base is now parkland without cars, good for a loop on a rented bike. From the hills in the south the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan line up on one side.

Beside Prospect Park. The cherry esplanade blooms all at once in late April, the season when crowds peak. The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, laid out in 1915, ranks among the oldest in an American public garden.