Metropolitan Museum of Art
Two million works, and a whole Egyptian temple rebuilt inside.
Duration
3 hrs – 5 hrs
Best time
At opening
Open
Closed Wednesday
Entry price
30 USD
The Met opened in 1870 and holds two million works across seventeen departments — less a museum than an encyclopaedia. You do not do the whole thing: you pick two or three departments and accept leaving the rest.
The Temple of Dendur, given by Egypt in 1965 after the rescue of the monuments threatened by the Aswan dam, is reassembled whole in a glazed wing. The Japanese and European armour, the Dutch painting and the roof garden, open in summer, are the other stops that hold up.
Getting there
Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, on the edge of Central Park. Subway 4, 5 and 6 to 86th Street, then ten minutes on foot.
Hours
10am – 5pm, until 9pm on Friday and Saturday; closed Wednesday
What the price covers
adult admission. $22 for over-65s and visitors with disabilities, $17 for students, free up to and including age 12. New York State residents and students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut pay what they wish, from one cent. The ticket covers the exhibitions and both Met sites on the same day.
Rules on site
Admission is pay-what-you-wish for New York State residents and a fixed price for other visitors: the desk does not always say so. The ticket also covers the Cloisters, in northern Manhattan, on the same day.
Checked on 3 September 2026 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Plan Your Visit
Other places in New York
Central ParkThree hundred and forty hectares drawn by hand in the middle of Manhattan.
Staten Island FerryA twenty-five-minute crossing that passes the Statue of Liberty.
- High LineA disused elevated railway turned into a planted walkway, two kilometres long.
- Brooklyn BridgeOne point eight kilometres of 1883 steel cable, crossed on foot along the upper deck.