15 Top Things to Do in New York City

Central Park is the 843-acre rectangle of designed landscape that keeps Manhattan sane, stretching about 4 km from Midtown to Harlem. Laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 1850s, it folds meadows, lakes, woodland and formal gardens into the middle of the grid, ringed by the skyline on every side.

Highlights include the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain, the Bow Bridge, the Lake with its rowing boats, Strawberry Fields honouring John Lennon, and the Belvedere Castle viewpoint. In summer the park hosts free Shakespeare and concerts; in winter, ice rinks. You could spend an hour here or a whole day.

The Empire State Building has been New York's defining skyscraper since 1931, a 102-storey Art Deco tower that held the title of world's tallest building for almost forty years. Its 86th-floor open-air observatory remains the classic New York view, looking straight down the avenues and out across all five boroughs.

A higher, glass-enclosed deck on the 102nd floor goes even further up, and the redesigned museum on the way to the lifts tells the story of the building's record-breaking thirteen-month construction. After dark the tower's crown lights up in colours that mark holidays and events across the city.

Times Square is the blazing crossroads where Broadway meets Seventh Avenue, wrapped in giant LED billboards that turn night into day. Love it or find it overwhelming, standing in the pedestrian plazas with the lights towering overhead is a quintessential New York moment, and it is the gateway to the Broadway theatre district.

More than forty Broadway theatres cluster in the surrounding streets, staging the long-running musicals and new plays that define American theatre. The square is also the heart of the action on New Year's Eve, when the famous ball drops to a crowd of hundreds of thousands of revellers.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the United States and one of the finest in the world, holding more than two million works that span 5,000 years. Its collection runs from Egyptian temples and Greek sculpture to European masters and a rooftop garden with a skyline view, all behind a grand Fifth Avenue facade.

Set aside serious time: the Temple of Dendur in its glass-walled gallery, the European paintings wing, the arms and armour hall and the American Wing are all highlights. The museum sits on Museum Mile on the edge of Central Park, which makes the two easy to combine in a single day.

Completed in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first steel-wire suspension bridge in the world and remains one of New York's most beautiful structures, its Gothic stone towers and cabled web instantly recognisable. Walking the elevated wooden promenade across the East River is one of the best free things to do in the city.

The roughly 1.8 km crossing takes around 30 to 40 minutes at a strolling pace and delivers constantly changing views of the Lower Manhattan skyline, the harbour and the Statue of Liberty. The Brooklyn side drops you near DUMBO and Brooklyn Bridge Park, with its famous Manhattan-framed photo spots.

The High Line is a 2.3 km elevated park built on a disused freight railway running along Manhattan's West Side, about nine metres above the street. Planted with wild grasses and perennials that nod to the self-seeded landscape which grew here after the trains stopped, it has become one of the city's most copied urban-design ideas.

The walkway threads between and through buildings from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District up to Hudson Yards, with seating, art installations, viewing spurs over the traffic and cafe kiosks along the way. It links neatly to the Whitney Museum at its southern end and Chelsea Market just below.

Built on the site of the World Trade Center, the 9/11 Memorial centres on two enormous reflecting pools set within the footprints of the fallen Twin Towers, their bronze edges inscribed with the names of the 2,983 people killed in the 2001 and 1993 attacks. The sound of the falling water makes the plaza unexpectedly peaceful.

The underground 9/11 Memorial Museum tells the story of the day and its aftermath through artefacts, recordings and personal belongings, descending to the original foundations of the towers. It is sombre and powerful, and easily one of the most affecting few hours in the city.

Rockefeller Center is a complex of Art Deco towers, plazas and the famous sunken ice rink that comes alive each winter beneath a giant Christmas tree. Its star attraction is Top of the Rock, the observation deck atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, whose great advantage is that the Empire State Building stands front and centre in the southern view.

Three open-air levels look out over Central Park to the north and the Midtown forest of skyscrapers to the south. The plaza below is worth a wander for the Channel Gardens, the gilded Prometheus statue and the studios of NBC, with the recently added Beam experience for the brave.

The Museum of Modern Art holds one of the world's greatest collections of modern and contemporary work, and its galleries read like a roll-call of famous paintings: Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Monet's Water Lilies, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Warhol's soup cans all hang here. It is compact enough to enjoy in a focused half day.

Beyond painting, MoMA collects design, photography, film and architecture, with a calm sculpture garden at its centre for a break between galleries. A major expansion added more space for its growing contemporary holdings, so there is always something new alongside the icons.

Grand Central Terminal is far more than a train station - it is a 1913 Beaux-Arts landmark and one of the most beautiful public spaces in the United States. The vast Main Concourse, with its teal ceiling painted with a backwards zodiac and its four-faced brass clock, is a genuine showstopper that halts first-time visitors in their tracks.

Below the concourse, the Grand Central Market and a sprawling dining concourse make it a good food stop, while the whispering gallery near the Oyster Bar carries a murmur diagonally across its tiled arches. It is free to walk in and admire, and sits steps from the Chrysler Building.

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the largest of its kind, a sprawling complex on the edge of Central Park best known for its towering dinosaur halls and the blue whale suspended over the Hall of Ocean Life. Its fossil collection is world-class, and the newer Gilder Center adds a soaring, cave-like atrium.

The attached Rose Center for Earth and Space, with its glowing Hayden Planetarium sphere, runs immersive space shows, and the dioramas of African and North American mammals remain beautifully crafted time capsules. It is a sure-fire hit with children and the setting for the film Night at the Museum.

The Staten Island Ferry carries commuters between Lower Manhattan and Staten Island around the clock, and it is completely free - which makes it the best-value sightseeing in the city. The 25-minute crossing passes close to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island while delivering a full panorama of the Lower Manhattan skyline.

There is no booking and no cost; you simply walk on at the Whitehall Terminal. Stand on the right-hand side heading out to Staten Island for the closest pass of Lady Liberty, then ride straight back from the St George Terminal if you came only for the views.

Greenwich Village is the leafy, low-rise neighbourhood that has drawn writers, musicians and artists for more than a century, its tangle of tree-lined streets a deliberate break from the Manhattan grid. At its centre, Washington Square Park gathers students, street performers and chess players beneath a marble arch modelled on the Arc de Triomphe.

The surrounding blocks reward aimless wandering: jazz clubs that have run for decades, historic townhouses, independent bookshops and the cafes of nearby Bleecker Street. It is one of the most walkable and atmospheric parts of the city, and a reminder that New York is not all skyscrapers.

Fifth Avenue is New York's most famous shopping street, a procession of flagship stores, jewellers and department stores running through Midtown toward Central Park. The stretch from Rockefeller Center to the park takes in Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co, the Apple Fifth Avenue glass cube and the windows that draw crowds at Christmas.

It is also studded with landmarks: the Gothic spires of St Patrick's Cathedral, the marble lions of the New York Public Library a few blocks south, and the Plaza Hotel at the avenue's northern end. Even without spending a cent, the architecture and people-watching make it a fine walk.