The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Which Parts Are Worth Your Time

The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest anywhere. The permanent collection contains approximately 1.5 million objects; around 400,000 are on display at any given time across 17 curatorial departments. A visitor who spent 30 seconds looking at each displayed object would need 33 hours to see everything. The practical question for a first or second visit is not “how do I see the Met?” but “which parts of the Met should I actually prioritise?”

Admission: Suggested donation pricing ended in 2018. For non-New York State residents, entry is now $30 adults. For New York State residents, the suggested donation model still applies; residents can pay less. Children under 12 are free. The ticket is valid for three days at the main building and also covers same-day admission to The Cloisters (the Met’s medieval art branch in northern Manhattan).

Five Departments Worth Planning Around

Egyptian Art. The Egyptian collection on the first floor is the largest Egyptian collection outside Cairo. The star piece is the Temple of Dendur - an actual Egyptian temple, transported stone by stone from Aswan in the 1960s when the Aswan High Dam would have submerged it, reassembled in a purpose-built glass wing that opens onto the park. The temple is approximately 2,000 years old (from the Roman period of Egyptian history, built by Augustus Caesar). The gallery also contains the Met’s collection of Old Kingdom tomb chapels - carved stone rooms from mastaba tombs, reassembled so visitors can walk through them - and one of the largest collections of funerary objects, jewellery, and mummies in any American museum. Allow 90 minutes.

European Paintings. The second floor European galleries running from the Italian primitives through the Impressionists contain work that would constitute the entire permanent collection of a smaller world-class museum. Vermeer’s Woman with a Lute and Young Woman with a Water Pitcher are in Gallery 632. Rembrandt’s self-portraits are in Gallery 636. The El Greco gallery has five substantial works including the enormous View of Toledo. The Impressionist galleries have Monet’s entire Haystacks series plus significant Renoir, Degas, Manet, and Cezanne canvases. These are not reproductions or secondary works; they are major paintings. The Velazquez portrait of Juan de Pareja (Gallery 616) is considered one of the finest Spanish Baroque paintings in North America. Give yourself 2-3 hours and accept that you will miss significant things.

American Wing. The American Wing at the northwest corner of the building covers American decorative arts and painting from colonial period through the early 20th century. The period rooms - complete reconstructed American domestic interiors from the 17th to 19th centuries, pulled from demolished buildings and reinstalled intact - are the aspect of the American Wing most people don’t anticipate. The Frank Lloyd Wright room (from a 1912 Minnesota house) is one of the few accessible Prairie Style interiors anywhere. The Central Park facade of the wing opens a great hall onto the park through arched windows. Specifically: Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) is here - enormous at 3.8 x 6.5 metres, depicting the famous 1776 Christmas crossing. It is better in person than in reproduction.

Arms and Armor. The Arms and Armor galleries on the first floor are consistently one of the Met’s most visited departments and consistently underrated by visitors who expect dusty weaponry. The European armour collection includes complete equestrian armour on horseback - the scale when you stand next to a 16th-century German destrier in full plate armour is difficult to convey. The Japanese armour section has some of the most visually striking objects in the building. The “Princes’ Tournament” - five complete equestrian armours from German and Italian workshops arrayed in a hall together - is worth seeing for anyone interested in craft or military history.

Greek and Roman Art. The Greek and Roman galleries were completely reinstalled in 2007 in a series of skylit courts that finally give the sculpture room to breathe. The collection spans from Cypriot Bronze Age objects (1400 BCE) through the Roman Imperial period. Notable pieces: the Euphronios Krater - a red-figure wine vessel from 515 BCE showing a scene from the Trojan War, with some of the finest Greek vase painting that survives. The collection of Roman portrait busts is the largest in North America. The architectural plasters gallery contains life-size casts of building elements from buildings that no longer exist in their original form.

The Roof Garden

From May through late October, the roof garden (free with admission) is open. Artists are commissioned each year to install a major work on the roof terrace, and the view from the terrace across Central Park toward the skyline is one of the best in Manhattan - free with your museum ticket. Check the Met website for current installation details.

The Cloisters

The Met’s medieval art branch is in Tryon Park at the northern tip of Manhattan, 12 km from the main building but covered by the same-day ticket. The building itself is assembled from medieval French monastic cloisters (actually transported stone by stone from five different French locations in the 1930s) and contains the medieval collection: illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, ivory carvings, and the Unicorn Tapestries - seven large Flemish tapestries from circa 1500 depicting the Hunt of the Unicorn, in extraordinary condition for their age, with colour still vivid. The Cloisters is consistently less crowded than the main building. Reach it by taking the A train to 190th Street (45 minutes from 86th Street) or by the M4 bus along Madison Avenue.

Where to Eat Near the Museum

Cafe Sabarsky is at the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue (two blocks south of the Met). It is a recreation of a Viennese coffeehouse with a serious menu of Austro-Hungarian pastry - Sachertorte, Dobos torte, Wiener Schnitzel - and good coffee. It has nothing to do with the Met but is the best lunch option in the immediate neighbourhood. Mains €20-32; pastries from $8-12. Book ahead or accept a possible wait.

The Met’s dining spaces (the Cafeteria in the lower level, the American Wing Cafe, and the Great Hall Balcony Bar) are good for coffee and snacks but overpriced for full meals. The roof garden bar, in season, serves drinks at expected Manhattan hotel prices.

For a full meal after the museum: walk west into the 80s and 90s on side streets between Park and Lexington. Scarpetta (224 East 81st Street, pasta-focused Italian, mains $30-45) and Candle 79 (154 East 79th Street, upscale plant-based, mains $22-35) are both within 10 minutes’ walk.

Getting There and Practical Details

Subway: 4, 5, or 6 train to 86th Street, then walk west to Fifth Avenue (about 5 minutes). The front steps on Fifth Avenue facing Central Park are the main entrance; there is also an entrance on 81st Street on the north side.

The museum is open 10:00-17:00 Sunday-Thursday and 10:00-21:00 Friday-Saturday. The Friday-Saturday evening sessions (17:00-21:00) are significantly less crowded than weekend afternoons; the Egyptian Wing in particular is walkable without crowds. Plan for this if you’re visiting on a Friday.