21 Best Sights in New York City, New York

Between 1892 and 1924, millions of people first entered the United States at the Ellis Island federal immigration facility. When the complex closed in 1954, it had processed ancestors of more than 40% of Americans living today. The island's main building, now a national monument, is known as the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, and it tells the story not just of Ellis Island but of immigration from the Colonial era to the present day, through numerous galleries containing artifacts, photographs, and taped oral histories. The museum's centerpiece is the cavernous, white-tile Registry Room (also known as the Great Hall). There's much to take in, so make use of the museum's interpretive tools. Check at the visitor desk for free film tickets, a good audio tour, ranger-led tour times, and special programs.

There is no admission fee for the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island, but an adult ferry ride (from Battery Park to Liberty Island to Ellis Island) costs $24.50 round-trip. Ferries leave from Battery Park (and from Liberty State Park in New Jersey) every 25–30 minutes depending on the time of year (buy your tickets online at  www.statuecruises.com). There are often long security lines, so arrive early, especially if you have a timed-entry ticket. There is an indoor-outdoor café on Ellis Island.

The life and legacy of Jackie Robinson, the trailblazing Black baseball player who broke the color barrier when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, is the focus of this new, $42 million interactive museum on the western edge of SoHo. Besides memorabilia—Robinson’s Dodgers uniform, rookie contract, and Rookie of the Year award are among hundreds of archival major-league artifacts on display—Robinson’s Civil Rights legacy is given equal due. The intense racial discrimination the Hall of Famer endured both on and off the field is powerfully narrated through photos and videos, including one clip that vividly recounts the segregation he and his wife, Rachel, experienced en route to Florida spring training as the South was under Jim Crow laws.

History buffs, train geeks, and playful children will all appreciate this unique museum inside a decommissioned 1930s subway station. Exhibitions include detailed timelines of the transit system's construction and evolution over the decades, but the true highlight is the subway platform two levels down, featuring train cars of different eras of the subway, dating back over a century ago. Adults and kids alike can wander these cars, each a time capsule of vintage aesthetics and advertising, or sit behind the driving wheel of a replica of an MTA bus. There are also old turnstiles and other transit memorabilia. The gift shop carries subway-line socks, decorative tile reproductions, and other fun souvenirs.

New York City's oldest (and perhaps most under-the-radar) museum, founded in 1804, has an extensive research library in addition to sleek interactive technology, a children's museum, and inventive exhibitions that shed light on America's history, art, and architecture. The eclectic permanent collection includes more than 14 million pieces of art, literature, prints, photographs, and memorabilia, and special exhibitions showcase the museum's unique voice and ability to provide fresh insight on all things related to New York and the nation. The Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture includes 100 dazzling Tiffany lamps on display and historic treasures that tell the American story in a novel way. Also part of the Luce Center is the Center for Women's History, examining the untold stories of women who have impacted and continue to shape the American experience. The DiMenna Children's History Museum on the lower level invites children to become "history detectives" and explore New York's past through interactive displays, hands-on activities, and the stories of iconic New York children through the centuries.  The museum hosts a New York--theme citywide Gingerbread contest around the holidays and displays the winners from mid-November to mid-January.

Storico, the light-filled restaurant on the first floor (separate entrance), serves upscale Italian food at lunch and dinner; Parliament Espresso & Coffee Bar sells beverages, pastries, and light lunch fare.

Beside the reflecting pools on the 9/11 Memorial Plaza is the glass pavilion of the 9/11 Memorial Museum (part of the complex known as the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum). The museum descends some seven stories down to the bedrock the Twin Towers were built on, and the vast space displays a poignant, powerful collection of artifacts, memorabilia, photographs, and multimedia exhibits, as well as a gallery that takes visitors through the history of events surrounding both the 1993 and 2001 attacks. You might appreciate the tissue boxes around the museum when experiencing the memorial wall with portraits and personal stories of those who perished. There's also a panoramic media installation about the site's "rebirth," as well as World Trade Center–related art and history exhibits that change throughout the year. Giant pieces of the towers' structural steel and foundations are displayed, along with the partially destroyed Ladder Company 3 fire truck. You can also see the remnants of the Survivors Stairs, which allowed hundreds of people to escape the buildings that fateful September day. (Check the website for current ticket packages and other discounts.)

This nonprofit project of the September 11th Families' Association opened in 2006 with the intent of putting the events of that day into context—at the time, there was little to see beyond a big construction site. Its galleries include displays about the history and construction of Lower Manhattan; the events of September 11, 2001; the response and recovery efforts after the attacks; and first-person histories. A Tribute visit tends to feel more intimate, and is a good alternative or complement to the broader mission of the separate National 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Guided walking tours are often led by survivors or first responders and cover the gallery and the memorial (not the National 9/11 Memorial Museum on the WTC site).

Four centuries' worth of art and artifacts bring Brooklyn's story to life at this marvelous, newly renovated space. Housed in an 1881 Queen Anne–style National Historic Landmark building, the center surveys the borough's changing identity through interactive exhibitions, landscape paintings, photographs, portraits of Brooklynites, and fascinating memorabilia. The Othmer Library’s magnificent reading room, with its stained-glass windows and carved wooden columns, transports visitors to an earlier era.

Subway tokens, Statue of Liberty figurines, and other artifacts you might find in a New York City time capsule crowd the displays of this quirky, community-run museum inside a former bodega. Recent temporary exhibits have included one with actual children's letters addressed to Spider-Man, sent to his comic book address in Queens. 

This former tavern, where General George Washington celebrated the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, is now a museum covering two floors above the famed restaurant and bar. Here, in his prepresidential days, Washington bid an emotional farewell to his officers upon the British evacuation of New York. Today, this historic landmark has two fully furnished period rooms—including the Long Room, site of Washington's address—and other modest displays of 18th- and 19th-century American history, as well as temporary exhibits. You'll find more tourists and Wall Street types than revolutionaries in the tavern and restaurant on the ground floor these days, but a cozy Colonial atmosphere and decent hearty meal are available.

Manhattan's only floating museum, a historic, nonprofit, and educational institution like no other, has as its centerpiece the Intrepid, a 900-foot-long aircraft carrier that was launched in 1943 and decommissioned in 1974. The carrier's most trying moment of service, the day it was attacked in World War II by kamikaze pilots, is recounted in a stirring multimedia presentation. On the ship’s various indoor and outdoor decks is a collection of 28 aircraft. The Enterprise—NASA's original prototype orbiter that paved the way for the space-shuttle program—is housed in a climate-controlled pavilion on the Intrepid’s flight deck. Surrounding exhibits share the shuttle's history and that of NASA's decades-long program.

Docked alongside the Intrepid, the submarine Growler—the only American guided-missile submarine open to the public—offers a firsthand look at life aboard a submarine, as well as a close-up inspection of the once top-secret missile command center. Also in the museum’s collection is a retired British Airways Concorde Alpha Delta G-BOAD passenger jet, which holds the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing by any Concorde. The museum provides specialized programs and resources to support visitors with disabilities and their families.

The exterior of this 1887 Orthodox synagogue-turned-museum (and community space), the first synagogue to be built by the many Eastern European Jews who settled in the Lower East Side in the late 19th century, is a striking mix of Romanesque, Gothic, and Moorish motifs. Inside are an exceptional hand-carved ark of mahogany and walnut (used to hold Torah scrolls), a sculptured wooden balcony, jewel-tone stained-glass windows, vibrantly painted and stenciled walls, and an enormous brass chandelier. Daily tours are included in the price of admission (check the website for times), and begin downstairs where interactive "touch tables" teach all ages about Eldridge Street, the Lower East Side, and the Jewish immigrant experience. The crowning piece of the building's decades-long restoration is a stained-glass window by artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans, which weighs 6,000 pounds and has more than 1,200 pieces of glass.

Founded in 1980, MOCA is dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of the Chinese people and their descendants in the United States. The current building, near the boundary between Chinatown and Little Italy (many would say it's in Little Italy), was designed by Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. MOCA's core exhibition on Chinese American history, With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America, includes artworks, personal and domestic artifacts, historical documentation, and films. Chinese laundry tools, a traditional general store, and antique business signs are some of the unique objects on display. Rotating exhibitions are held in another gallery. MOCA also sponsors workshops, neighborhood walking tours, lectures, and family events. Open Saturday only. 

In a granite 85-foot-tall hexagon at the southern end of Battery Park City, this museum aims to educate visitors on the "broad tapestry of Jewish life in the 20th and 21st centuries—before, during, and after the Holocaust." Architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo designed the six-sided museum to be symbolic of the Star of David, and its three floors of exhibits demonstrate the dynamism of Jewish culture. Visitors enter through a gallery that provides context for the early-20th-century artifacts on the first floor: an elaborate screen hand-painted for the fall harvest festival of Sukkoth, tools used by Jewish tradesmen, and wedding invitations. Other exhibits present the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism and the ravages of the Holocaust. Signs of hope are also on display, including a trumpet that Louis Bannet, “the Dutch Louis Armstrong,” played for three years in the Auschwitz-Birkenau inmate orchestra. The third floor covers postwar Jewish life. The museum's east wing has a theater, memorial garden, library, galleries, and café. A free audio guide, with narration by Meryl Streep and Itzhak Perlman, is available at the admissions desk.

The city's present, past, and future are explored through quirky, engaging exhibits on subjects such as architecture, fashion, history, and politics in a Colonial Revival building designed for the museum in the 1930s along 5th Avenue's Museum Mile. The award-winning, ongoing exhibitions New York at Its Core and Celebrating the City explore the sweep and diverse facets of the city's 400-year history through artifacts, photographs, archival film, and interactive digital experiences. Don't miss Timescapes, a 28-minute media projection that innovatively illustrates New York's physical expansion and population changes (free headsets available with translations in French, Spanish, and Mandarin), or Activist New York, an ongoing exploration of the city's history of social activism. You can also find New York–centric lectures, films, and walking tours here. The on-site Chalsty's Café serves sweet treats, savory snacks, breakfast, and lunch, and the Museum Shop is a great place to pick up a Big Apple souvenir.  After your visit, cross the street and stroll through the Vanderbilt Gates to enter the Conservatory Garden, one of Central Park's gems.

Just a short five-minute stroll from the ferry terminal, this museum sheds "light" on lighthouse history throughout America. It's housed not in a lighthouse, but in the foundry that was once part of an 18-building complex for the U.S. Lighthouse Service's General Depot, the center of all lighthouse operations across the country from 1864 to 1939. Self-guided tours through the small museum reveal miniature scale models of many recognizable American lighthouses, an exhibit on the technology of Fresnel lenses, plus displays about famous lighthouse keepers, who collectively played an important role in American maritime history. 

Massive granite columns rise to a pediment topped by a double row of statues at the impressive Beaux-Arts Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House (1907), which is home to the New York branch of this Smithsonian museum (the other branch is in Washington, D.C.). Inside, the oval stairwell and rotunda embellished with shipping-theme murals (completed in the 1930s) are worth a long pause. The permanent exhibition, Infinity of Nations, is an encyclopedic survey of Native American cultures from across the continent, with the entire museum preserving more than 825,000 art pieces and artifacts dating from ancient to modern times. The venue presents changing exhibitions, videos and films, dance, music, and storytelling programs.

The first museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to posters, this spot was opened in 2019 by a group of poster enthusiasts who saw a gaping hole in the city's museum scene and decided to, ahem, poster over it. The museum hosts a series of moving exhibitions. Past shows have included the work of Czech art nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha and 1970s Blaxploitation movie posters, among other themes.

Why get a crick in your neck—or worse, risk looking like a tourist—while appreciating New York City's famous skyline? Instead, visit this small museum, where you can appreciate highly detailed, hand-carved miniature wood models of Midtown and Lower Manhattan; explore the past, present, and future of the skyscraper—from New York City's Empire State Building to Dubai's Burj Khalifa (taller than the Empire State Building and Chicago's Willis Tower combined)—and examine the history of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Exhibits continue to evolve, so expect models of current or future buildings, videos, drawings, floor plans, and talks that reveal the influence of history, real estate, and individuals on shaping city skylines.

Head to this unique Manhattan museum, housed inside Schermerhorn Row's early 19th-century brick buildings, to understand the history of the South Street Seaport—and its importance in making New York the ultimate commercial harbor of early America. The museum's visitor center ( 12 Fulton St.) leads you to fascinating exhibits within the carefully preserved, landmarked spaces, and ties into displays at the printing house around the corner ( 211 Water St.) and inside Cannon's Walk ( 206 Front St.). Many find that the Seaport Museum's main attractions, however, are the five restored tall ships docked in the harbor at Pier 16. Museum visits include access (weather permitting) on the 1907 lightship Ambrose and the 1885 ship Wavertree. There are also public sailings of the 1885 schooner Pioneer. The museum organizes walking tours of the area, too. (Creative nonfiction lovers take note: Joseph Mitchell's collection of early New York stories, Up in the Old Hotel, brings to life tales from the neighborhood and the hotel that once occupied some of today's South Street Seaport Museum spaces.)

This is the best collection of Hispanic and Spanish art outside El Prado in Madrid, with more than 18,000 works in paintings, sculptures, textiles, manuscripts, music, and decorative arts dating from the Paleolithic through the 20th century. On the first floor in the Sala Bancaja, stand in the middle and admire the 13 massive, colorful paintings, capturing everything from Holy Week penitents to fishermen in Catalonia. A smaller room houses intricately carved marble pieces from bishops' tombs. Upstairs, there's a room filled with antique iron doorknockers, two rooms of earthenware from Spain and Mexico, and notable pieces by Goya, El Greco, Murillo, Velázquez, and Zurbarán. The entrance is on Broadway, between 155th and 156th Streets, up the steps to the left.

From the late 19th century through the end of World War II, tens of thousands of Ukrainians made their way to New York City—and particularly to "Little Ukraine," as much of the East Village was known. This museum examines Ukrainian Americans' dual heritage, with a permanent collection made up of folk art, fine art, and documentary materials about immigrant life. Ceramics, jewelry, hundreds of brilliantly colored Easter eggs, and an extensive collection of Ukrainian costumes and textiles are the highlights. To continue the Ukrainian experience, head to nearby Veselka restaurant for borscht and pierogi.