United States
New York
Broadway, the Met and a downtown that reinvents the rules every decade
The most programmed city on earth, and the most expensive. Everything is available tonight if you can pay for it, and half of it is free if you know where to look.
New York runs culture as an industry, which makes it both the easiest and the most punishing city in this guide. Broadway alone sells more than ten million tickets a year, the Met Opera stages a different work almost every night of its season, and the Chelsea gallery district shows more contemporary art on a free Thursday afternoon than most European capitals manage in a month.
The prices are the highest here by a distance, and the city has built an entire counter-economy around them: digital lotteries for Broadway hits, rush tickets at the Met, pay-what-you-wish evenings at the Whitney, standing room at Carnegie Hall, and the fact that every commercial gallery in Chelsea is free to walk into and always has been. A visitor who plans around those mechanisms sees more than one who simply pays.
Downtown is where the rules get rewritten. The performance spaces of the East Village and the loft venues of Bushwick programme the work that will be in the museums in fifteen years, and they cost less than a cocktail in Midtown.
The day
New York hour by hour
When things open, when they fill and when the city changes shift.
- 10:00The Met opens. Go straight past the Egyptian wing, everyone else turns right there.
- 11:00Chelsea galleries open, all free, most of them empty until the afternoon.
- 14:00Broadway matinees on Wednesday and Saturday, the cheapest way into a hit show.
- 20:00Curtain across Broadway and at the Met Opera.
- 23:30The jazz clubs play their late set, usually the better one, usually half price.
The quarters
Where to walk
Four districts that between them cover most of what matters.
Museum Mile
The Met, the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie and the Cooper Hewitt strung along Fifth Avenue against the park.
Midtown and the theatre district
Forty-one Broadway houses, Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center campus a few blocks north.
Chelsea
Two hundred galleries in old warehouse floors, free, open Tuesday to Saturday, and the High Line running through them.
Brooklyn
BAM, the Brooklyn Museum, the loft venues of Bushwick and the best live music per square mile in the country.
The venues
8 rooms in New York
Museums
Live Rooms and Clubs
Plan it
Forty-eight hours in New York
Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, built from the venues above.
Questions
How do I get cheap Broadway tickets?
Digital lotteries the day before, rush tickets at the box office when it opens, standing room for sold-out hits, and the TKTS booth for same-day seats at up to half price.
Are the Chelsea galleries really free?
Yes, all of them, and nobody will ask you anything. Tuesday to Saturday, roughly eleven to six. Thursday evening openings come with a free glass of wine.
Met Museum or MoMA?
The Met for everything up to 1900 and an afternoon you will not finish, MoMA for the twentieth century in two well-edited hours. MoMA is free on the first Friday evening of the month.
Next
Other cities
86Germany
Berlin
Three opera houses, five museums on one island and a club that never asks the time
85United Kingdom
London
The greatest free collections on earth and the most expensive tickets in Europe
82France
Paris
The museum as a state religion, and an opera house built to be looked at
84Austria
Vienna
Standing room at the State Opera for the price of a coffee