New York

Besides the enthralling temporary exhibitions, there are excellent collections of African, Oceanic and Islamic art, along with more than 3,000 European paintings from the Middle Ages to the fin de siècle period, including major works by Titian, Brueghel, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya and Degas. Egyptology fans should head straight for the glass-walled atrium housing the Temple of Dendur. The Greek and Roman halls have received a graceful makeover, and the incomparable medieval armour collection has been recently enriched.

Phone:

+1 212 535 7710

Opening hours:

9.30am-5.30pm Tue-Thur, Sun; 9.30am-9pm Fri, Sat. The Met opens its doors on Monday holidays, including Martin Luther King Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day and the Monday between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Address:

1000 Fifth Avenue, at 82nd Street

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s Liberty Enlightening the World, a gift from the people of France, was unveiled in 1886. On the way back to Manhattan, the ferry will stop at the popular Immigration Museum, on Ellis Island, through which more than 12 million entered the country between 1892 and 1954. The exhibitions are a moving tribute to the people from so many different countries who made the journey to America, dreaming of a better life.

Phone:

Museum +1 212 363 3200

Opening hours:

Ferries to the island run 8.30am-3.30pm daily.

Address:

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Wall Street is synonymous with the world’s greatest den of capitalism. It took its name from a defensive wooden wall built by the Dutch in 1653 to mark what was then, the northern limit of New Amsterdam. The nerve centre of the US economy is the New York Stock Exchange (11 Wall Street, between Broad and New Streets). The streets around Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center, have been drawing crowds since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

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Manhattan’s Chinatown is the largest Chinese community outside Asia. Its busy streets get even wilder during the Chinese New Year festivities, in February, and around the Fourth of July, when the area is the city’s best source of (illegal) fireworks. The markets on Canal Street sell some of the best, most affordable seafood and fresh produce in the city. Canal Street, a bargain hunter’s paradise, is infamous as a source of (illegal) knock-off designer handbags, perfumes and other goods.

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Address:

South of Broome Street and west of Broadway

The Empire State Building was financed as a speculative venture by General Motors executive John J Raskob; builders broke the ground in 1930. It sprang up in 14 months with amazing speed, completed more than a month ahead of schedule and $5 million under budget. The 1,250ft tower snatched the title of world’s tallest building from under the nose of the months-old, 1,046ft Chrysler Building, conveniently showing up Raskob’s Detroit rival Walter P Chrysler.

Phone:

+1 212 736 3100

Opening hours:

9.30am-midnight daily (closed during extreme weather). Last elevator up 11.15pm.

Address:

350 Fifth Avenue, between 33rd & 34th Streets

The Museum of Modern Art contains the world’s finest and most comprehensive holdings of 20th-century art. Principal departments include Architecture and Design, Drawings, Painting and Sculpture, Photography, Prints and Illustrated Books, and Film and Media. These display works that include the best of Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Giacometti, Lawrence, Pollock, Rothko and Warhol, among many others. In summer 2006 MoMA stages the first major US museum show dedicated to the avant-garde Dada movement.

Phone:

+1 212 708 9400

Opening hours:

10.30am-5.30pm Mon, Wed, Thur, Sat, Sun; 10.30am-8pm Fri.

Address:

11 W 53rd Street, between Fifth & Sixth Avenues

Even if your schedule doesn’t allow time to view the collections, you must get a glimpse of this dramatic spiral building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In addition to works by Manet, Kandinsky, Picasso and Chagall, the museum owns Peggy Guggenheim’s haul of cubist, surrealist and abstract expressionist works, along with the Panza di Biumo Collection of American minimalist and conceptual art from the 1960s and ’70s.

Phone:

+1 212 423 3500

Opening hours:

10am-5.45pm Mon-Wed, Sat, Sun; 10am-8pm Fri.

Address:

1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street

Glide down the dramatic staircase and enter a glamorous world where votives flicker over a fashionable crowd that comes for the scene, the fruity cocktails and the street-market-inspired dishes.

Phone:

+1 212 675 2322

Opening hours:

6pm-2am daily.

Address:

403 W 13th Street, at Ninth Avenue

Cielo is a wonderful little joint – the urban-ski-lodge decor looks terrific, the sunken dance floor is a nice touch, and the place boasts one of the city’s clearest sound systems. (Weekends are a slightly different matter, though, with all of the tables reserved.) The club features top-shelf house from world-class DJs, with everyone from Masters at Work’s Louie Vega to drum ’n’ bass superstar Roni Size having plied their trade here. Every Monday Cielo is treated to DJ deity François K’s dub-heavy Deep Space session.

Phone:

+1 212 645 5700

Opening hours:

10pm-4am daily.

Address:

18 Little W 12th Street, between Ninth Avenue & Washington Street

This glowing lime-green dining room is tiny, but the inventive flavours created by sushi chefs Ben and Ken Lau (brothers who worked at Bond Street) are bigger than you’ll find just about anywhere. Jumbo speciality rolls are the main draw: shrimp tempura hooks up with eel, avocado, cream cheese and caviar in the Tahiti roll; the Volcano is crab and shrimp topped with spicy lobster salad then set aflame with a blowtorch in an eruption of melding flavours.

Phone:

+1 212 228 6751

Opening hours:

5pm-midnight Mon-Thur, Sun; 5pm-1am Fri, Sat.

Address:

63 Clinton Street, between Rivington & Stanton Streets