One of the world's greatest museums, the Met is also the largest art museum in the western hemisphere -- spanning four blocks and encompassing 2 million square feet. Its permanent collection of nearly 3 million works of art from all over the world includes objects from the Paleolithic era to modern times.

The Met first opened its doors on March 30, 1880, but the original Victorian Gothic redbrick building by Calvert Vaux has since been encased in other architecture, which in turn has been encased. The majestic 5th Avenue facade, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, was built in 1902 of gray Indiana limestone; later additions eventually surrounded the original building on the sides and back. (You can glimpse part of the museum's original redbrick facade in a room to the left of the top of the main staircase and on a side wall of the ground-floor European Sculpture Court.)

The 5th Avenue entrance leads into the Great Hall, a soaring neoclassical chamber that has been designated a landmark. Past the admission booths, a wide marble staircase leads up to the European paintings galleries, whose 2,500 works include Botticelli's The Last Communion of St. Jerome (circa 1490), El Greco's View of Toledo (circa 1590), and Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653). The arcaded European Sculpture Court includes Auguste Rodin's giant bronze The Burghers of Calais (1884-95).

The American Wing, in the northwest corner, is best approached from the first floor, where you enter through an airy garden court graced with Tiffany stained-glass windows, cast-iron staircases by Louis Sullivan, and a marble federal-style facade taken from the Wall Street branch of the United States Bank. On the third floor, rooms are decorated in period furniture -- everything from a Shaker retiring room to the living room of a Frank Lloyd Wright house -- and American paintings.

The Met didn't enter the realm of 20th-century art until 1967, allowing the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney to build their collections with little competition. It has made up for lost time, however, and in 1987 it opened the three-story Lila Acheson Wallace Wing. Pablo Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906) is the centerpiece of this collection. The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, above this wing, open from May to late October, showcases 20th-century sculptures and has a unique view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.

To the left of the Great Hall on the first floor are the Greek and Roman galleries. Grecian urns and mythological marble statuary are displayed beneath a skylighted, barrel-vaulted stone ceiling. An indoor courtyard holds Roman sculpture, and on the walls are a collection of rare Roman wall paintings excavated from the lava of Mt. Vesuvius. The Met's awesome Egyptian collection, spanning some 4,000 years, is on the first floor, directly to the right of the Great Hall. Here you'll find papyrus pages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, stone coffins engraved in hieroglyphics, and mummies. The collection's centerpiece is the Temple of Dendur, an entire Roman-period temple (circa 15 BC) donated by the Egyptian government in thanks for U.S. help in saving ancient monuments. Another spot suitable for contemplation is directly above the Egyptian treasures, in the Asian galleries: the Astor Court Chinese garden reproduces a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) scholar's courtyard, complete with water splashing over artfully positioned rocks.

The Gothic sculptures, Byzantine enamels, and full-size baroque choir screen built in 1763, part of the first-floor Medieval galleries, might whet your appetite for the thousands of medieval objects displayed at the Cloisters. Straight ahead from the Medieval galleries is the skylighted white space of the Lehman Wing, where the large personal collection of late donor Robert Lehman is displayed in rooms resembling those of his West 54th Street town house. The collection's gems are the old-master drawings; Renaissance paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, Petrus Christus, and Hans Memling; French 18th-century furniture; and 19th-century canvases by Goya, Ingres, and Renoir. To the north of the Medieval galleries is the Arms & Armor exhibit, which is full of chain mail, swords, shields, and fancy firearms. On the ground floor, the Costume Institute has changing exhibits of clothing and fashion spanning seven centuries that focus on subjects ranging from undergarments to Gianni Versace.

Tours (departing from the Great Hall) covering various sections of the museum begin about every 15 minutes on weekdays, less frequently on weekends. Self-guided audio tours are also available. During evening hours on Friday and Saturday, cocktails are served accompanied by chamber music. It might be easier to induce kids to join you at the museum after they've read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a story of a brother and sister who run away from home and hide out in the museum.

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