Fifth Avenue & The Cloisters
The Metropolitan Museum in New York, and What to See First
Every century, one address. Choosing is the hard part.
Type at least two letters.
Tickets & Tours
-
New York museums and galleries
Seven New York museums with tickets here, a Lower East Side walk and five Brooklyn street-art outings.
20 experiences -
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
How to get into the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue and which way suits you: the $30 ticket, a group tour, a semi-private one or a private guide.
24 experiences in 4 destinations -
Around the Metropolitan Museum
The Metropolitan Museum stands inside Central Park, on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street.
30 experiences in 2 destinations
What travellers say
The six most-reviewed tours of the Met
Chosen by weight of evidence rather than by margin: about 3,800 reviews between them, and none rated below 4.8. Before you book, check that the inclusions name the museum ticket. Across the Met tours on sale, just over half do.
The Met Highlights Guided Tour for Small Groups of up to 18
An art historian leads up to 18 people through the Met: Dendur, Henry VIII's armor, Madame X, the Greek and Roman galleries. Admission included, 2 or 3 hours.
Private Guided Tour of the Met for Groups of up to 8
Just your party and a guide for 2.5 hours at the Met: Henry VIII's armor, Vermeer, Van Gogh, the American Wing. Entrance fees included, evenings Fri and Sat.
Met Museum Highlights in Two Hours with an Expert Guide
An art guide leads up to 18 people past Monet's Water Lilies, Madame X, Rodin and the Tomb of Perneb in two hours, admission included. You stay on afterwards.
Met Museum Highlights Tour by ExperienceFirst, Ticket Included
An ExperienceFirst guide meets you past security with your ticket: two hours through Egyptian, Greek, Roman and European art, up to 10 travelers per booking.
Semi-Private Met Museum Tour with a Maximum of 8 Guests
Never more than 8 guests: 2.5 hours at the Met with Henry VIII's armor, the Chicago Stock Exchange stairs and Vermeer. Runs with a minimum of 2 travelers.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Highlights Guided Tour with Admission
Washington Crossing the Delaware, Vermeer, Van Gogh and a Roman villa bedroom: a two-hour Met highlights route in English, with museum admission included.
Ratings collected by Viator, Tripadvisor and Civitatis
The dossier
We read every Met tour on sale. Most show you the same few rooms
The Metropolitan Museum has 17 curatorial departments in two buildings. The tours sold to visit it cover a narrow slice of that. European paintings appear in two tours out of three, Egyptian art in three out of five, the Temple of Dendur in about two in five.
The Costume Institute and the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing appear in none of them, and the Asian galleries almost never. Five tours in six meet in the Great Hall, and two in three last two hours.
A tour is still the quickest way into a building this size. Knowing its route tells you where to spend the rest of the day: in the rooms the groups walk past.
The museum, page by page
Seventeen departments, two buildings and a century and a half of history, with the sources named and dated. Six places to start.
What to see in two hours, or a day
Three routes through the Fifth Avenue building, with gallery numbers and minutes per stop, each checked against what was open on September 29, 2026.
Seventeen departments, floor by floor
Where each department sits, what it covers and one work we checked on view. Two are mostly shut: Ancient West Asia, due back in 2027, and modern art, waiting for the Tang Wing in 2030.
The Met Cloisters
The medieval branch in Fort Tryon Park. The same ticket covers it on the same day, and the A train runs there from 59th Street in about 20 minutes.
A history, 1870 to 2030
How an 1869 meeting became two Manhattan buildings: the dates that matter, the admission rules as they changed, and what the museum plans to open in 2030.
What the web gets wrong
Free entry, three-day tickets, Monday closing, the world's biggest museum: the claims repeated about the Met, checked against the museum's own texts.
More than 406,000 free images
Anything marked Open Access on the Met's website can be downloaded and reused, commercial use included, under CC0: no fee, no permission, no credit required.
Before you go
$30 at the desk, shut on Wednesdays, and on no city pass
Adults pay $30, seniors 65 and over $22, students $17, and children 12 and under nothing. Pay-what-you-wish still exists, but only for New York State residents and for students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. One ticket covers both buildings, Fifth Avenue and the Cloisters, on the date printed on it.
Both close every Wednesday, and Fifth Avenue stays open until 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. No New York City pass includes the Met: CityPASS and Go City leave it out, and the museum does not accept vouchers from outside sellers.
Eleven pages cover the rest: how to get there, bags and rules, visiting with children, step-free routes, and how to choose between a group tour, a private guide and going on your own.
Editorial
Stories
Notes on the museum, its galleries and the streets around it.
Krasner and Pollock at the Met Museum, and Modern Art on Fifth Avenue
Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous runs to January 31, 2027 in gallery 899, included in the $30 ticket. We read the museum's records: every Krasner and Pollock work on view that day was inside the show, because the modern galleries stay shut until 2030.
Designing the Gilded Age at the Met Museum: Tiffany on Fifth Avenue
Nearly 120 Tiffany drawings open at the Met on October 22, 2026. The Gilded Age room you can actually stand in is one floor below, on permanent display, and its house was demolished in 1938.