The giant among New York museums both figuratively and literally: At 1.vi meg foursquare feet, it's not only the biggest museum in the urban center, information technology'south the largest one in this hemisphere. And I'd argue it competes in stature with the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid, the Uffizi in Florence, and the British Museum in London.

On view are masterworks from nigh all the world's cultures—from Egyptian mummies to ancient Greek statuary to Islamic carvings to Renaissance paintings to Native American masks to 20th-century decorative arts. Evidently, there'due south no way to run into it all in 1, two, or fifty-fifty five visits. So yous must cull carefully among the eighteen curatorial departments and make up one's mind what interests you most.

I way to do and then is by taking ane of the hour-long scholarly "Highlight" tours—gratuitous with admission and offered five times a day—led past volunteer docents. These enthusiastic art lovers are a treasure in and of themselves, highly trained and well-spoken. They'll run y'all all over the museum, pointing out and expounding upon the various gems of the collection, offer a quick sense of taste of the museum's highlights so that you can come back yourself and feast upon what really interests you.

If I had to selection the top five highlights, I'd select:

  • The European paintings drove on the second floor (expanded in 2013 from 450 works to 700) with such jewels every bit Velazquez's truer-than-life portrait of Juan de Pareja (the slave whom the painter respected plenty—you can see it in the painting—to set complimentary); El Greco'southward brooding land scape of Toledo; 20 Rembrandts; 5 light-kissed Vermeers; a roomful of van Goghs; and works by Manet, Monet, de Goya, Breughel, Van Eyck, and every other master you read near in your higher art-history form.
  • The menstruation rooms, which re-create dozens of important chambers, including Louis XIV'south country bedroom in Versailles; and the stunning Cubiculum from Boscoreale, a perfectly preserved, brilliantly colorful room from a villa a mile from Pompeii that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a.d 15 b.c.79. Whenever I visit these rooms I'yard always reminded of the terrific children's novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil Due east. Frankweiler, in which the protagonists slept each nighttime in a celebrated bed. Share it with your tweens and they'll be dying to come up here.
  • The American Drove, the most comprehensive in the world, featuring masterworks by Sargent, Homer, Tiffany, Leutze (his sentimental but rippingly fun Washington Crossing the Delaware), and many more.
  • The Egyptian Collection includes some pieces discovered by the Met's own teams of archaeologists, such as the miniature figures constitute in a tomb in Thebes that show in intricate detail what daily life for a wealthy Egyptian was like. There are also elaborate statuary; mummy cases; jewelry; wall paintings; and the Temple of Dendur, an actual temple to the goddess Isis that was saved from the rising waters of the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam.
  • The hidden Hall of Art from Nihon, with its famed Iris Screens (on many Metropolitan Museum products), is also home to architectural-looking suits of armor, frail woodcuts, and dazzling kimonos. To my heed, this one of the most ravishingly beautiful sections of the museum.
Along with all the art, the Met has half a dozen cafes and restaurants, wonderful gift shops and bookstores, and tremendously engaging art and culture programs for children of all ages (mostly on the weekends; visit the website for info).