Lower Manhattan

Pirates, rogue politicians, upwardly mobile go-getters, robber barons, scrappy entrepreneurs, and roaming packs of pigs scouring the streets for garbage: no, this is not the group photo for any given presidential administration. Rather, this is the citizenry that built and inhabited the southern tip of Manhattan in various eras, and in varying combinations.

Lower Manhattan, or in the parlance of New Yorkers emphatically giving directions to tourists, "all the way downtown," has long been where the action—or transaction—is. Back when the neighborhood was the village of New Amsterdam (1626-47), its roguish director-general, Peter Minuit, did the quintessential deal on behalf of the Dutch, trading knives, tools, and cloth to an Algonquian tribe, the Canarsees, for all of Manhattan (the market price of $24 is more or less an urban myth). In 1789, a year before New York City would lose its title as America's capital, George Washington was sworn in as the nation's first president at Federal Hall, where, two years later, Congress would ratify the Bill of Rights.

Little is left from Manhattan's colonial era, however: apart from a precious few structures built in the 1700s, the 19th-century brick facades of South Street Seaport are about as old as it gets here. As you'll notice immediately, the neighborhood has largely given way to the sometimes intimidating (and on weekends, seemingly deserted) skyscraper-lined canyons of Wall Street and lower Broadway. Bounded by the East and Hudson rivers to the east and west, respectively, and by Chambers Street and Battery Park to the north and south, this is an area you can fully and best appreciate by walking its streets.

You'll want to see what's here, but above all you'll want to see what's not, most notably in that empty but evolving gulf among skyscrapers: Ground Zero.

The southern tip has often served as a microcosm for a city that offers as many first shots as it does second chances, so it's appropriate that it's the key point of departure for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This experience should never be underestimated as too touristy a way to spend a day. Like nothing else, the excursion will remind you that we're a city of immigrants and survivors.

The city's downtown neighborhoods give you a close-up view of some of the many cultures of Manhattan. Tucked to the west, south of Canal Street, residential TriBeCa has a quieter vibe and still owes much of its cred to Robert De Niro, whose investments in the area include the TriBeCa Grill and the nonprofit TriBeCa Film Center. Unlike nearby SoHo and NoLita's in-your-face commercial presence, TriBeCa keeps more to itself with self-assurance and urban grace. And although TriBeCa's money is hidden away behind grand industrial facades, you can get a taste of it at one of the posh neighborhood restaurants or when the stars turn out for the annual TriBeCa Film Festival in spring.

Chinatown, by contrast, is a living, breathing, anything-but-quiet ethnic enclave: a quarter of the city's 400,000 Chinese residents live here above storefronts crammed with souvenir shops and restaurants serving every imaginable regional Chinese cuisine, from modest dumplings to sumptuous Hong Kong feasts. What started as a 7-block area has morphed into more than 40 blocks above and below Canal Street with tea shops, restaurants, Buddhist temples, herbalists, acupuncturists, and pungent open-air markets.