★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Workers just finished the most ambitious renovation in decades - the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing reopened this past May with record-breaking crowds of 33,700 people in a single day, the highest turnout since 2017. You're standing at the crossroads where Fifth Avenue meets 82nd Street, looking at what most people don't realize is actually a building built around a building... literally. That imposing Beaux-Arts facade you see was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and finished in 1902, but hidden inside those walls is the original 1880 Ruskinian Gothic structure by Calvert Vaux - the same architect who designed Central Park behind you. The old west facade still peeks through in the Robert Lehman Wing, like a Victorian secret wrapped in classical grandeur. Even wilder, when they built the American Wing in 1924, they actually salvaged and rebuilt the entire 1823 marble facade from a demolished Wall Street bank, moving it stone by stone to create what you'll see inside. This place has grown from a single Roman sarcophagus - their very first acquisition in 1870 - into 2.2 million square feet housing 5,000 years of human creativity. Just last month, over 5.7 million visitors made their way through these doors, with locals like you making up 62 percent of that crowd... which means you're about to join one of the most popular cultural destinations on Earth.
Did You Know?
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art was conceived in Paris in 1866 by a group of Americans—including future Chief Justice John Jay and Theodore Roosevelt Sr.—who wanted to create a cultural institution that would rival Europe’s great museums, planting the seeds for what would become the largest art museum in the United States and a symbol of America’s cultural ambitions.
- A Roman marble sarcophagus acquired in 1870 was the Met’s very first artwork, but the museum’s collection quickly grew to include 174 European paintings by masters such as Anthony van Dyck and Nicolas Poussin, even before it had a permanent building—showcasing the founders’ ambitious vision from the start.
- The Met’s current location on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, opened in 1880, was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould in a distinctive Ruskinian Gothic style, but the iconic Beaux-Arts facade familiar today wasn’t added until 1902, blending Old World grandeur with New York’s evolving architectural identity.