Top 10 Places to Visit in New York City

Manhattan, the dense commercial core, is where nearly all first-time visitors spend most of their time: a 21-kilometre-long island laid out on a numbered street grid above Houston Street (a plan fixed by the 1811 Commissioners' Plan) and a tangle of older, colonial-era streets below it. The subway, opened in 1904 and now running 24 hours a day on most lines, is the fastest way to cross the island and reach the outer boroughs; a single-ride MetroCard or tap-to-pay OMNY fare currently runs a flat rate regardless of distance.

The city's character shifts block by block rather than by broad district: the Financial District's 19th- and early-20th-century towers give way within minutes to the converted 19th-century warehouses of Tribeca and SoHo, then the tenement-scale streets of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, then the vertical Midtown core built after the 1916 Zoning Resolution first allowed setback skyscrapers. Central Park, opened in 1858 as the first major landscaped public park in the United States, sits at the island's centre and divides the Upper East and Upper West Sides.

JFK and Newark Liberty are the main international gateways, with LaGuardia handling mostly domestic traffic; all three connect to Manhattan by subway, AirTrain, or the LIRR/NJ Transit rail networks, and airport taxis charge flat or metered fares depending on the route. Spring (April–May) and fall (September–October) bring the mildest weather and the fullest calendar of outdoor events; summer is hot and humid, and winter brings genuine cold with occasional snow. Sales tax (8.875% in Manhattan) is added at the register, not shown on price tags, and tipping 18–22% is the norm at sit-down restaurants and for taxis, food delivery, and hotel staff.