METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

You could devote an entire week to visiting this immense museum. The main entrance, opposite 82nd Street, is crowned by grand staircases. You can also use the basement entrance opposite 81st Street. The Met's slogan says it all: 5,000 years of Art! This New York institution, the local equivalent of our Louvre, was founded in 1870 by a group of eminent citizens of finance, industry and the arts. It was then a bizarre little building, glimpsed in Scorsese's film The Age of Innocence. The museum occupies the equivalent of four blocks. It is said that it would take a lifetime to discover the nearly 2 million works of art housed in the Met's 18 departments over 600 km², and another lifetime to absorb their significance in space and time: the museum brings together art objects from 5,000 years of the most diverse civilizations (China, Far East, Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, Africa, Oceania, Europe, the Islamic world, the Americas), from prehistory to the present day. The Metropolitan accumulated its treasures for 90 years before building the galleries in which to display them. A visit of just a few hours, if you wanted to see everything (assuming it were possible), would be a marathon bordering on the absurd. However, the Metropolitan Museum, like the rest of America, is devoid of works from the Pre-Raphaelite school! Another difficulty is that, given the sheer number of works in the museum's holdings, some collections can only be viewed on a rotating schedule. The Met brings together five major collections: Egyptian antiquities, primitive arts, medieval art, European and American painting. More than just an exhibition, it offers a truly immersive experience. The museum itself, for example, has partially reconstructed a medieval church, the interior of a bedroom in the time of Louis XIV or Louis XVI, or a Pompeii villa. In addition to the five major collections, there are entire wings devoted to modern art, musical instruments, arms and armor, Islamic art, ancient Near Eastern art (a gallery currently undergoing renovation), Greek and Roman art (the second largest collection in the world after that of the Athens museums), European sculpture, decorative arts and much more. From Egyptian statuary to Byzantine jewelry, from Florentine and Venetian paintings and porcelain to ^18th- and ^19th-century American artists, from the incredible collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters to English, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish and Italian painters... In May 2025, the Michael C. Rockefeller wing reopened after a vast $70 million renovation. Completely redesigned, it is devoted to the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. This new immersive space features masks, textiles, sculptures and ritual objects from cultures often under-represented in Western museums.

You could devote your entire stay to visiting this fortress embedded in Central Park. The museum is so large that you'll never have the feeling of an overflow of tourists (except when you have to queue at the entrance, of course). The halls are vast and easy to navigate. Not-to-be-missed works include Auguste Rodin's Les Bourgeois de Calais in the sculpture wing, Jackson Pollock's famous painting Rythme d'automne, Vincent Van Gogh's Self-portrait in a Straw Hat, Claude Monet's La Grenouillère, Egyptian funerary portraits, the Sphinx of Hatshepsut, the Byzantine galleries, Self-portrait in 1660 by Rembrandt, Diptych by Van Eyck, Portrait de la princesse de Broglie by Ingres, the Seated Couple sculpture in the Arts of Africa section, Gertrude Stein by Picasso, Cyprès by Van Gogh, the Impressionist collection... The highlight of the ancient Egyptian collection is the gigantic Temple of Dendur (or Temple of Isis), a true Egyptian temple commissioned by the Emperor Augustus and built around 15 BC, not far from the town of Aswan. In 1965, Egypt donated the Nubian temple to the United States, and the 800-ton structure was shipped to America, before being installed at the Met in 1978.

Knowing all this, you'll have to make a very subjective choice before rushing headlong into the museum. It's best to choose on the basis of whether you prefer Japanese weapons or Impressionist painters. It's impossible to see everything, unless you want to devote your entire stay to the museum. Before you go out, be sure to take a look in the museum's art stores, which offer magnificent reproductions at affordable prices. The Cantor Roof Garden Bar on the panoramic terrace on the fifth floor offers a beautiful view of Central Park and New York (open from May to late autumn, weather permitting, Sunday to Tuesday and Thursday from 11am to 4:30pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 11am to 8:15pm), especially as this outdoor space is also home to contemporary works of art in the summer months.